How can I execute commands on startup in awesome?

Question

I want to execute some commands after login if awesome-windowmanager starts. How can I add startup-commands to the awesome-config?

Answer 1

According to this ArchLinux wiki you should just need to add the following to your rc.lua:

-- Autorun programs
autorun = true
autorunApps = 
{ 
   "swiftfox",
   "mutt",
   "consonance",
   "linux-fetion",
   "weechat-curses",
}
if autorun then
   for app = 1, #autorunApps do
       awful.util.spawn(autorunApps[app])
   end
end

The wiki also show a couple of other ways to achieve the same effect.

Answer 2

I am going with dex, so far.

$ cat /etc/X11/Sessions/awesome 
#!/bin/sh
# Awesome Xsession starter, based on Xsession shipped by x11-apps/xinit-1.0.5-r1
...
zenity --title "Autostart" --timeout=30 --question --text="Launch autostart items?" && dex -a
exec ck-launch-session /usr/bin/awesome

Let's have some autostart items too then:

$ ls -1 ~/.config/autostart/
gol.desktop
KeePass 2.desktop
skype-skype.desktop
tomboy.desktop
wpa_gui-wpa_supplicant.desktop
xterm-logs.desktop

Example autostart item:

$ cat ~/.config/autostart/gol.desktop 

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Terminal=false
Name=Growl For Linux
Comment=Growl Desktop Notification System For Linux
Categories=GNOME;GTK;Utility;
Exec=/usr/bin/gol
Icon=/usr/share/growl-for-linux/data/icon.png
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true
X-KDE-autostart-after=panel
X-Desktop-File-Install-Version=0.18

Answer 3

The Awesome wiki suggests this way that will work when reloading Awesome.

Put this in runonce.lua

-- @author Peter J. Kranz (Absurd-Mind, [email protected])
-- Any questions, criticism or praise just drop me an email

local M = {}

-- get the current Pid of awesome
local function getCurrentPid()
    -- get awesome pid from pgrep
    local fpid = io.popen("pgrep -u " .. os.getenv("USER") .. " -o awesome")
    local pid = fpid:read("*n")
    fpid:close()

    -- sanity check
    if pid == nil then
        return -1
    end

    return pid
end

local function getOldPid(filename)
    -- open file
    local pidFile = io.open(filename)
    if pidFile == nil then
        return -1
    end

    -- read number
    local pid = pidFile:read("*n")
    pidFile:close()

    -- sanity check
    if pid <= 0 then
        return -1
    end

    return pid;
end

local function writePid(filename, pid)
    local pidFile = io.open(filename, "w+")
    pidFile:write(pid)
    pidFile:close()
end

local function shallExecute(oldPid, newPid)
    -- simple check if equivalent
    if oldPid == newPid then
        return false
    end

    return true
end

local function getPidFile()
    local host = io.lines("/proc/sys/kernel/hostname")()
    return awful.util.getdir("cache") .. "/awesome." .. host .. ".pid"
end

-- run Once per real awesome start (config reload works)
-- does not cover "pkill awesome && awesome"
function M.run(shellCommand)
    -- check and Execute
    if shallExecute(M.oldPid, M.currentPid) then
        awful.util.spawn_with_shell(shellCommand)
    end
end

M.pidFile = getPidFile()
M.oldPid = getOldPid(M.pidFile)
M.currentPid = getCurrentPid()
writePid(M.pidFile, M.currentPid)

return M

Use it this way:

local r = require("runonce")

r.run("urxvtd -q -o -f")
r.run("urxvtc")
r.run("urxvtc")
r.run("wmname LG3D")

Answer 4

ArchWiki Approach

For newer users, in the ArchWiki you can find that you need to:

1. create ~/.config/awesome/autorun.sh and add

#!/usr/bin/env bash
function run {
  if ! pgrep -f $1 ;
  then
    $@&
  fi
}

run checks with the process grep (so you don't re execute the process), and puts the bins straight into the background.

In the ~/.config/awesome.rc.lua tell it to spawn that file with the shell (bash or whichever you set). You do it like so (last line in file):

awful.spawn.with_shell("~/.config/awesome/autorun.sh")

---

Simpler Approach

Now for me, with many arguments the pgrep was a bit picky. So I wrote a simpler, good for my use at least, script. This is my autorun.sh:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

feh --bg-scale $(ls ${HOME}/wallpaper/*.png|shuf -n1) &
nm-applet &