wrong working directory on autostart .desktop files

[Adrian Eduardo Rolla]

Using Xubuntu 16.04
At desktop startup, .desktop files located at ~/.config/autostart are started with wrong working directory.

How to reproduce the bug:
Foo.desktop contents
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=Foo
Comment=
Path=/home/adrian/Downloads
Exec=bash -c "pwd && while true; do sleep 100; done"
Icon=
Terminal=true
StartupNotify=false

When destop starts up, ~/.config/autostart/Foo.desktop is launched.
Output in terminal of pwd command is:
/home/adrian

It should be instead:
/home/adrian/Downloads

Bug does not happen if after desktop is up and running, you manually launch foo.desktop, which shows:
/home/adrian/Downloads

as it should be.

Any other Exec=command that is depending on working directory shows the same issue, just used this simplest example to enable anyone to reproduce the bug. Hope it helps.

Thanks.

[V-chgis-g (v-chgis-g)]

I've symlinked a .desktop file into ~/.config/autostart.

The program executes fine when it's menu item is clicked, but it does't work on log-on.

This is because xfce4-session is ignoring the Path entry in the .desktop file that should set the working directory for the executable - and the app is broken enough to fail if it's started in the wrong directory.

I'm using xfce4-session as packaged for Fedora 16: xfce4-session-4.8.3-1.fc16.x86_64.

[Robby Workman (rworkman)]

Perhaps something similar to 8f89ae4bb60fe6b15e0a8eb5b31135fbdd6ca182 in xfdesktop is needed here - Eric?

[Eric Koegel (eric-koegel)]

Oh yeah, makes sense. I don't have time to write a patch today.

[Robby Workman (rworkman)]

xfce_spawn_command_line_on_screen() is used there, and it doesn't allow a working directory passed to that function. There are some others in libxfce4ui/libxfce4ui/xfce-spawn.c that look plausible to use here, but I'm going to defer this one to someone more experienced. Thanks, Eric! :-)

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1787402/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

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[Carl F Karsten (carl-g)]

bump. me too.