Can't Save Automatically Started Applications

[life0riley]

I have a script that starts conky when I login. I added it to System Settings --> Autostart --> Automatically Started Applications. I exit System Settings. Then I open system settings and can't find my entry.
How can I save an entry to Automatically Started Applications?

[SteveRiley]

Autostart entries are .desktop files in ~/.config/autostart. When you create an entry, do you see the corresponding file appear in the directory? Does your user account have write access to this directory? It should.

[life0riley]

Can't Save Automatically Started Applications

I have write access to the directory. I checked ~/.config/autostart and found the corresponding file there. I didn't know to check .desktop. I'll check that and report back. It might be a bit. I have an install going on right now that is taking up resources. When that is finished I'll fire up Vivid and check.

[life0riley]

I misunderstood what you wrote.

Autostart entries are .desktop files in ~/.config/autostart. When you create an entry, do you see the corresponding file appear in the directory? Does your user account have write access to this directory? It should.

There is no .desktop directory. The autostart files are .desktop files.

This is what I see in ~/.config/autostart.

life0riley@kubuntu-vivid:~/.config/autostart$ ls -lta
total 16
drwxrwxr-x  2 life0riley life0riley 4096 May 30 20:23 .
drwx------ 13 life0riley life0riley 4096 May 30 20:23 ..
-rw-------  1 life0riley life0riley   83 May 30 15:25 .directory
-rwx--x--x  1 life0riley life0riley   37 May 30 15:07 .conky_startup_script.sh
life0riley@kubuntu-vivid:~/.config/autostart$

[life0riley]

Well...I found out why it wasn't working and I understand what you mean by .desktop files.
Ramblings of a software engineer: Autostart in Plasma 5

Autostart will not work with .sh bash scripts. It only looks for .desktop files.

I have some reading to do about this. I'll report back if I figure it out or ask if I get stumped.

[life0riley]

OK. I was doing it wrong.

This is how I got it to work.
Go to System Settings --> Autostart --> Automatically Started Applications
Click Add Program
Select conky from /usr/bin/conky

Now it is there and it starts when I log in.
I also have Start with an empty session selected in System Settings --> Autostart -->Desktop Session so I don't get multiple instances of conky running.

[SteveRiley]

Glad you got it sorted.

[life0riley]

...
Go to System Settings --> Autostart --> Automatically Started Applications
Click Add Program
Select conky from /usr/bin/conky
...

Conky was crashing with this setup, because it was starting before the desktop was fully loaded.

This is how I resolved it.
I opened Kate and pasted the following into it.

#!/bin/bash
sleep 40 &&
conky -d
exit

Then I saved it as .conky_startup_script.sh in $HOME/.config/plasma-workspace/env.
I made it executable.

chmod +x .conky_startup_script.sh

Then I did the following.
System Settings --> Startup and Shutdown --> Autostart
Click Add Program
Select conky from the path /usr/bin/conky
Click the Application tab
For the Command field Click Browse and choose the path $HOME/.config/plasma-workspace/env/.conky_startup_script.sh

Conky has stopped crashing and now starts after the desktop has finished loading.

[life0riley]

Still curious you needed this delay and for others it works OOTB...

It works OOTB on full hard drive installations. The VirtualBox guests load the desktop slower. There were no problems with conky auto starting on Kubuntu 12.04 through 14.04. I didn't didn't install 14.10, but I assume it would have worked like 14.04. Up to this point I haven't changed the default system settings and always started with restore previous session checked. I just opened a terminal and started it, conky &, and never gave it another thought. It just started when I logged into my desktop. This worked about 60% of the time with Kubuntu 15.04. It was the same with autostart in 15.04 until I put the script in with the delay.