Xfce Forum

skifter

Member

Registered: 2024-01-05

Posts: 2

In a pickle and need to config autostart via CLI

I'm in a bit of an awkward position and need to enable and disable what applications autostart for users remotely, and via CLI as I don't have enough bandwidth to contact users or enable remote desktop for all 20+ machines.

Looking through machines available at the moment, I just can't seem to find any reference to how these applications configured in each users ~/.config/autostart/ are being enabled or disabled. Can someone show me where to look?

These are XFCE mostly on Linux Mint 21.1

Many of them are unattended media player kiosks

StJimmy

Member

From: De Lage Landen

Registered: 2022-06-27

Posts: 7

Re: In a pickle and need to config autostart via CLI

One thing I could suggest would be:
If you have a distro running Xfce on your own machine, then see what happens when you copy a .desktop file that's enabled to someplace else, then disable that autostart item from the settings manager (so if e.g. 'foo.desktop' is enabled, copy that to e.g. '~/Documents', then disable the original item).  Compare the contents of both files to see what changed (eg. by manual comparison or running 'diff').
Then you could use something like 'sed s/[enabled line]/[disabled line]/' to modify or 'echo [line contents] >> autostartfile.desktop' to add the line that 'controls' the setting in each of your users' autostart files.

Last edited by StJimmy (2024-01-06 15:56:55)

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Nanos gigantum humeris insidentes.

skifter

Member

Registered: 2024-01-05

Posts: 2

Re: In a pickle and need to config autostart via CLI

For anyone coming across this, I had it all wrong. in the .desktop file just set Hidden=false and it runs on boot. The problem I had was that the application was quietly failing making me think it just wasn't running at all.