• Another Vexing BookWorm + Pi4 Issue Solved - autostart per-user

    From 56d.1152@3:770/3 to All on Mon Nov 6 23:06:12 2023
    I'd been complaining to someone the other day that I had
    a graphical app I wanted to autostart as soon as a user
    was fully logged in.

    Now with Bookworm, on a *Pi3* you can just put stuff
    in '/home/user/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart'
    which you should just copy from the similar dir in
    '.etc/xdg' and set ownership accordingly.

    But, moving to a Pi4 ... IT DIDN'T WORK.

    Thought MAYBE it was because I'd originally done the
    install and everything on a Pi3, so I re-installed
    from scratch on the Pi4.

    Still could NOT get my python script to automatically
    start.

    Now a big issue is that until a user IS logged in,
    there's no SCREEN on which to display the graphics,
    so you can't autostart from root crontab or /etc
    or anything else that starts-up earlier.

    And no, switching back to Xorg from Wayland using
    raspi-config did NOT work.

    Even tried a script that starts the python app, with
    a sleep delay, in .profile and .bashrc - no good.
    @reboot does NOT seem to work for a USERS crontab in
    modern Debs.

    And no I'm not gonna try and sort out screen defs
    after the fact - tried that once, TOO evil.

    The easiest fix turned out to be dumping the local
    /LXDE-pi/autostart entirely and creating a
    /home/pi/.config/autostart FOLDER.

    You put .desktop files INTO that folder ... and
    edit what they start up (you can do it with pcmanfm).
    THEN they appear in the inadequate "lxsession-edit"
    app and you can check/uncheck activation as you want.
    I got my .desktop file from /usr/share/something,
    in my case it was the 'lxterminal' one, and then
    bent it to my will in the /home/xxxx folder

    By the time that autostart stuff runs, there IS a
    screen for the user and everything Just Works.

    In theory a systemd entry, customized for a user
    and with necessary delays and requires params,
    might also work. Systemd is NOT always super-
    well documented alas. It CAN do all kinds of neat
    stuff but the syntax has to be *perfect*.

    This has been a very weird issue - and HARDWARE
    SPECIFIC. As said, everything worked as expected
    on the Pi3, but NOT on the Pi4.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: Agency HUB, Dunedin - New Zealand | Fido<>Usenet Gateway (3:770/3)