Help:Autostart
From Openbox
When you log in with the "Openbox" session type, or launch Openbox with the openbox-session
command, the autostart script will be executed to set up your environment and launch any applications you want to run at startup.
When you run the openbox
command on its own, the autostart scripts will not run. They are run by openbox-session
or when you log in graphically with the "Openbox" session type.
Note: Some distributions ship an "openbox" session type (for display managers) that simply calls the openbox binary. You want to select the entry that mentions "session."
You can use this script to launch a panel, to set your desktop wallpaper, or anything else.
The autostart script is located at ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh
. If that file does not exist, then the system-wide default script, located at /etc/xdg/openbox/autostart.sh
, is run instead.
The default autostart file sets up a number of things for you:
- It sets a plain color for the background so you don't have to see the ugly default X background
- It runs
gnome-settings-daemon
if you have GNOME installed, so that your GTK applications will look and work the way they have been set up through the GNOME configuration tools. - It runs
xfce-mcs-manager
otherwise so that GTK applications will inherit their settings from the XFCE configuration tools. - It runs
kdeinit
if you have KDE installed, so that your KDE applications will have the background processes running that they need. - It runs
xdg-autostart
, if you have PyXDG installed, to run any programs that have requested to be started with the X session. (It does not run GNOME or KDE specific applications unless asked to, seexdg-autostart --help
.)xdg-autostart
is installed to/usr/lib/openbox/
because it will be distributed as part of the PyXDG package in the future.
Setting up your environment
If you would like to set environment variables that will affect openbox, you can place them in ~/.config/openbox/environment
. This file is run before openbox and so will affect everything run in your current login session. Here's an example ~/.config/openbox/environment
file:
export PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH
export LC_CTYPE=ja_JP.utf8
export XMODIFIERS=@im=SCIM
export GTK_IM_MODULE=scim
export QT_IM_MODULE=scim
Making your own autostart
If you want to launch different programs with Openbox than those provided in the default autostart file, create the file ~/.config/openbox/autostart
. You can run the system-wide autostart through this file by using the command ". $GLOBALAUTOSTART
". Here's an example ~/.config/openbox/autostart
file:
# Run the system-wide support stuff
. $GLOBALAUTOSTART
# Programs that will run after Openbox has started
hsetroot ~/wallpaper.png &
xcompmgr -c -t-5 -l-5 -r4.2 -o.55 &
# SCIM support (for typing non-english characters)
scim -d &
# A panel for good times
fbpanel &
Make sure that you end any commands with "&" so that they are run in the background, or any programs after it (including Openbox!) will not run until it finishes.
You do not need to run Openbox at the end of this script. This script is run just before Openbox is launched by openbox-session
.