I'm trying to start an X application automatically when the system enters run level 5.
What is the correct way to do this?
I've written a script and put it in /etc/init.d/
I've run the appropriate chkconfig commands to setup up the symbolic links in the /etc/rcX.d directories.
Everything works fine except the script can't start the X application when I run:
/sbin/service scriptName start
The line looks like this (I've switched in xclock for the sake of argument):
'start')
xclock
I get the following error:
Error: Can't open display:
After some research it appears that /sbin/service removes most of the environment variables from a typical shell. By adding DISPLAY:
'start')
DISPLAY=:0
export DISPLAY
xclock
I get:
Error: Can't open display: :0
I modified my script to include:
'start')
DISPLAY=:0
export DISPLAY
XAUTHORITY=/root/.xauth2w90ge
export XAUTHORITY
xclock
And now it works - but this is obviously a hack as the .xauth2w90ge file is generated and won't be the same from instance to instance.
So is there a proper way to do this, or am I barking up the wrong tree? My requirement is to have this application autostart with the machine and I am limited by whatever commands and permissions I can run in an RPM postinstall script.
Rather than defining an init script, you should be having X (or your window manager) start the process automatically. X, KDE, and Gnome all have ways of automatically starting things up (i.e. ~/.kde4/Autostart).
If this IS just X, go modify your /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc file (or equivalent) to have it run your command. Mine looks like this at the bottom of the file:
if [ -n "$failsafe" ]; then
twm &
xclock -geometry 50x50-1+1 &
xterm -geometry 80x50+494+51 &
xterm -geometry 80x20+494-0 &
exec xterm -geometry 80x66+0+0 -name login
else
exec $command
fi
So you would change that to run whatever command you want.