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shmu
Asked: 2020-01-10 06:17:20 +0800 CST

multiple instances of conky running, but no startup entry

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On Kubuntu 19.10 I installed conky from the repo, configured it, and made an autostart entry. After a reboot, I see in System Monitor that two instances of conky are running, can't figure out why.

ps -auxf | grep conky
shmuel    1436  0.0  0.1  27660 12248 ?        S    13:08   0:00  \_ /usr/bin/conky
shmuel    2060  0.0  0.0   8896   924 pts/1    S+   13:13   0:00          \_ grep --color=auto conky
shmuel    1580  0.0  0.1  27656 12384 ?        S    13:08   0:00 /usr/bin/conky

If I kill the two conky processes that show in System Monitor, and then start conky from terminal, I get:

ps -auxf | grep conky
shmuel    4442  0.1  0.1  27664 12452 pts/1    S+   16:17   0:00  |       \_ conky
shmuel    4459  0.0  0.0   8896   848 pts/2    S+   16:17   0:00          \_ grep --color=auto conky
autostart conky kubuntu

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    When users start a new session, they can decide which applications should load automatically. The graphical interface for that is accessed via System settings > Startup & shutdown > Desktop session. The lowermost section titled "On login" allows the user various options:

    Image showing part of the Desktop Sessions interface

    On login options

    For whatever reason, the default option is the first one, Restore previous session. Retaining this option, in some cases, could have unintended consequences.

    Consider having an application in one's autostart. If this application is

    • not specifically closed by the user (before logging out, shutting down or rebooting) or
    • entered in the Applications to be excluded from sessions box,

    the user could see additional instances of the application open or running after each login.

    The combination I prefer is to have whatever I want in Autostart¹ together with Start with an empty session.

    ¹ In my autostart, I use a time delay to avoid potential "race" conditions. When a session starts, it's quite a busy time for the system. So I use a delay of 1 min for my conky and 2 min for Dropbox.

    • 2

  2. Check the contents of

    /home/your username/.config/autostart

    and

    /home/your username/.config/autostart-scripts

    remove any conky related files from there.

    ps -auxf | grep conky

    that may show you what and where the conkyrc is starting from.

    /proc/<conky pid>/

    look through the files there to get more information about the running process

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