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Asked: 2013-01-21 19:37:09 +0800 CST

Where are logon and startup scripts for graphical settings located and how are they managed?

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Where and how are the Ubuntu equivalent of your personal Windows configuration stored? Something akin to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run as well as the Start Up menu.

I have spotted the System --> Preferences --> Startup Applications menu entry which seems to do some of it, but it doesn't appear to cover most of the things.

I am more concerned with those which a pertinent to a graphics login, either directly at the computer or remotely through NX or x2go for instance, as well as those that apply to every user such as this xrandr and those the user might configure personally

For instance I have got an xrandr script to set my screen resolution and I also need to configure Firefox to allow me to use multiple profiles. Currently I do all from the gnome terminal after logging onto the desktop.

Is there some guide where I can configure all these settings at logon time? The main thing is the should only apply to logging to Ubuntu or Gnome destkop, not logging on at the console.

login

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Programs that start at login in a graphical environment are called from .desktop launcher files in ~/.config/autostart and in /etc/xdg/autostart/. Here are the specifications for the autostart launchers. It's basically just a special case of the normal .desktop specification

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  2. Usually, individual applications store their data/configurations in ~/.[program], however, login programs store their initializations elsewhere.

    For instance, to have something start upon terminal login, you could put it in ~/.bashrc.

    However, you want to have it start upon desktop login. For that, you should write a script that executes all the things you do by hand.

    After that, set the script to executable (chmod +x [script]).

    Last of all, go to System --> Preferences --> Startup Applications, and add your script to the list.

    That should be it!

    Comment if that doesn't solve your problem.

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  3. It's not an answer per se but just to add some more to what others said - depending on how well you know your system you might want to configure this with GUI. You will probably have to display all apps in gnome-session-properties first, i.e. ignore the Hidden attribute of .desktop files. To do so run sudo gedit /etc/xdg/autostart/print-applet.desktop and change NoDisplay=true to NoDisplay=false.

    Other than that, each autostart .desktop file can contain OnlyShowIn entry, e.g. OnlyShowIn=GNOME; will only run an app in GNOME and not in Unity, LXDE or other environments.

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