Starting a script on xfce login and logout?

Question

I use xfce4 as my desktop environment, running on a Gentoo box. I want to start the pulseaudio server when I login. In general, how do I get a script to run as soon as I login to xfce, and how do I get a script to run when I logout?

Answer 1

If you have root access, you can always edit the startxfce4 script. According to the documentation:

startxfce4

The startxfce4 is a convenient script to start an Xfce 4 session from the console. It will give you a session with a taskbar and a panel and with the desktop manager and window manager running.

All programs, or symbolic links to programs, in ~/Desktop/Autostart/ will be run by startxfce4 on startup.

To customize the behaviour of startxfce4, copy the file ${sysconfdir}/xfce4/xinitrc to your personal ~/.config/xfce4/ directory and edit that file. If you install from source, ${sysconfdir} defaults to /usr/local/etc; for binary packages it is often set to /etc.

With the inclusion of a session manager in Xfce 4.2, the preferred way to change startup behaviour is by using the "Save session" option in the logout dialog.

Or you can use the xfce4-autostart-editor program.

For the logout part, see the http://wiki.xfce.org/tips page for the personal logout script.