no way to set order of startup programs

[fangorious]

in gnome-session-properties 2.13.91-0ubuntu1, there is no way to set the order that startup program will launch. The list items are not drag/drop capable, nor is there a "move up"/"move down" button combination on the Startup Programs tab. When Adding/Editing a startup program, there is no option to specify a starting order (used to have a number fiedl defaulted to 50 in breezy). On top of this, the order I add startup programs in isn't maintained. If I add mail-notification, compiz, and gnome-window-decorator, the next time I log in they will be listed in this order instead: compiz; mail-notification; gnome-window-decorator. So it's not even resorting them in alphabetical order! But it does re-arrange them into the same order every time.

See also bug 148605.

[Miguel Martinez (el-quark)]

I have suffered the same behaviour you have. I have also found a workaround (*very* primitive).

First add the startup programs you want and then restart session. Now you should be able to edit startup programs to match the ones you want in the order you want.

[fangorious (fangorious-deactivatedaccount)]

How do you reorder them? There's no UI for it. They aren't draggable in the list and there's no sorting buttons and there's not field for starting order.

[McQueen (camplear)]

I can confirm this behavior on Dapper Flight 4. There is no method available to order the priority of the startup programs in the gnome-session-properties GUI.

[Matti Lindell (mlind)]

This must be regression? I could set their order before.

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

This looks a lot like http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=332745

[fangorious (fangorious-deactivatedaccount)]

I'm not havin gany trouble with changes not being preserved across logins. I just can't set the order of Startup Programs. That gnome.org bug is against 2.10, and still has the UI for setting startup order.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Have you tried to:
- run gnome-session-properties
- go to the "Current Session" tab
- changed the "Order" number
?

What changed about that dialog? Could you make a screenshot of the dialog you use to change the priority?

[fangorious (fangorious-deactivatedaccount)]

That field is gone. I've attached two screenshots.

[fangorious (fangorious-deactivatedaccount)]

The Startup Programs tab

[fangorious (fangorious-deactivatedaccount)]

I mislabeled that first screenshot. That one was the editable properties of a startup item. This one is the Startup Programs tab of the Sessions window.

[Matti Lindell (mlind)]

It used to look like this http://www.fs-security.com/docs/pics/sessions-small.png

[Peter Shultz (pashultz)]

I have the same problem on Dapper Flight 5, with the added problem of changes not being saved. More precisely, I can add programs to the startup list (with no priority info), but if I delete one, then close and restart (the command for me is gnome-session-properties), the deleted program remains on the list.
Is this worth a separate bug report?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for the comments, I've forwarded the issue upstream: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=336719

Is the ordering something useful?

[fangorious (fangorious-deactivatedaccount)]

One of the many threads on how to setup xgl/compiz involved adding items to the Startup Programs in a specific order. Also, having the network monitor applet start before network related items would make sense.

[x (xk2c-deactivatedaccount)]

For those of you who suffer i have a workaround.

in the tab "Startup Programs" enter the program you like to start like this:

sleep 3 && /usr/bin/klipper

and with amount of seconds you can force them to start in the order you would like to have them.

I use the above example to klipper after the notification area is started.

[raboof (arnouten)]

Maybe (actually, now that I think of it, probably) the programs are started in parallel rather than in sequence.

In that case, being able to order them really doesn't make much sense.

Documenting the fact that you can add a sequence of commands like Thilo mentioned (program1 && program2) is probably the best short-term solution to this bug - though adding UI for it would be even better of course :).

[raboof (arnouten)]

gnome bug #336719 was marked duplicate of gnome bug 330693.

[Nikolaus Filus (nfilus)]

The proposed workarounds are not even short-time solutions, as there are multiple side effects of the missing startup order.
From my bug report (marked as duplicate):

Especialy the notification area is much to late available, causing different effects:
- kadu (KDE gadu-gadu IM client) doesn't start in the tray, but shows its icon on the desktop
- gaim starts in window mode and not minimized as configured
- different notifies (network manager, power manager, updates) are shown at various inconsistent places / corners

Is there a way to push the upstream developers / upstream priority?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Le lundi 27 novembre 2006 à 10:38 +0000, Nikolaus Filus a écrit :

> Is there a way to push the upstream developers / upstream priority?

Probably by sending a patch. You can't force people hacking on their
free time to do work they don't want to do, the best way is to make the
job easier for them

[murrayf (murrayf07)]

Hello,

   I have found the same issue in Feisty. Besides that, I can't add new entries in startup programs, they are not saved. The solution I have found is to edit manually /home/"your_user"/.gnome2/session or session~ like this:

  At the end of this file there are entries that start by a number and look like this "12,RestartCommand=beryl-manager"... if we would like to add for example, glipper as startup program after beryl load, then we would select its position with the correspondent number + "," + "RestartCommand=full path" (13,RestartCommand=/usr/bin/glipper), if there is some doubt I attach you my /home/myuser/.gnome2/session and you can see how the programs I want load in the order that I want...

   At the end of session file there is a line called "num_clients=" after equal sign it is necessary to put the last number plus 1 (in the attached file 16). Don't forget to save this file as /home/"your_user"/.gnome2/session, if everything goes well you will see the programs you want in the order you want after rebooting the machine...

Alberto.

:)

[prithwin (getprith)]

here is a simple workaround,for me beryl-manager has to start before gdesklets otherwise it will crash
so make a shell script like

#!/bin/sh
beryl-manager
sleep 10 #make sure that beryl-manager has started
gdesklets start

and put this in the startup

[Giuliastro (gyesspam)]

I understand there is a "sleep" workaround, but what if I want to be sure one of my applications starts before all other ones?

[Götz Christ (g-christ)]

Finally, will there be a graphical way to set order of startup programs?
If not, what should I do to set the startup order?

[murrayf (murrayf07)]

    This bug is solved in tribe 5, now you can manage your startup
programs in the order you want graphically.

Alberto.

G. Christ escribió:
> Finally, will there be a graphical way to set order of startup programs?
> If not, what should I do to set the startup order?
>
>

______________________________________________
LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo.
Llamadas a fijos y m�es desde 1 c�imo por minuto.
http://es.voice.yahoo.com

[Jacob D'Agostino (jdagost1)]

I'm using Tribe 5 and there is no way to manage the order of startup programs. What are you talking about?

[murrayf (murrayf07)]

I don't know if the order of load is correct, but at least, you can set
the programs you want to load...

El sáb, 01-09-2007 a las 13:20 +0000, Jacob D'Agostino escribió:
> I'm using Tribe 5 and there is no way to manage the order of startup
> programs. What are you talking about?
>

______________________________________________
LLama Gratis a cualquier PC del Mundo.
Llamadas a fijos y m�es desde 1 c�imo por minuto.
http://es.voice.yahoo.com

[Jacob D'Agostino (jdagost1)]

You can check or uncheck specific programs, but you can't move them up or down in the list. I've got a little script that automatically unlocks my gnome keyring for me, but I need to run it before NetworkManager (or else it bugs me for the password anyway to use my WPA key). There's no way to change it so that my script runs first. In fact, unless it's just a really weird coincidence, the programs are listed in alphabetical order. What? Why? That makes *no* sense. Should I file a bug report upstream?

[praet (praet17)]

On my ubuntu 7.04 the gnome-session-properties is sorted by the Name given to the session entry. Changing the name changes the sort (so you could perpend a numeric entry to force a sort.

The files created are stored in:
~/.config/autostart

and follow the desktop entry spec: http://standards.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=No name
Name[en_US]=gnome launch box
Exec=gnome-launch-box -n -t
X-GNOME-Autostart-enabled=true

I will check if changing the sort by altering the entry Name actually changes the launch order.

[praet (praet17)]

Well it seems that all entries are executed simultaneously, the sort order currently does not have any effect on execution order.

[Götz Christ (g-christ)]

Will be there a fix in Gutsy?

Why isn't there an order option?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

No, that's not going to change in gutsy now. There is no such option because nobody coded one, you are welcome to do so though the code is open source

[Brice Terzaghi (terzag)]

I'm using Intrepid (with Gnome) and looking for a way to set priorities / order for the programs started at the beginning of the session.
It seems the option existed before Dapper, was dropped for some reason and reappeared later (I've been told there's an "order" column in the session preferences of Hardy).

Why has this functionnality been dropped (once more ?) and is it planned to be back some day ? Or is there some other way in Intrepid to set an order for programs started at the beginning of the session ?

The problem still exists in current Jaunty alpha but I guess it's normal as it still has mainly the same Gnome applications than Intrepid.

[KhaaL (khaal)]

I have to agree with terzag on this one, this is semi-important since if a user takes advantage of the put plugin in compiz, it has no effect if the program mentioned in the put plugin is started before compiz.

[Juan Simón (simonbcn)]

The "order" column in the session preferences of Hardy is only informative. Although I change it, to close the Properties window, returns to its original value.
It's useless, so I presume they have deleted.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Note that gnome-session since Intrepid starts the session in phases, with the phase being specified in the autostart desktop file for the application. By default, Compiz is started in the "windowmanager" phase, which means that it is guaranteed to be running before anything else that starts in the later phases ("panel", "desktop", "applications"). That means the Compiz issue mentioned earlier is not an issue in Intrepid or Jaunty, as Compiz is guaranteed to be started before anything else.

Most things start in the "application" phase, including any launchers you add with gnome-session-properties. There is currently no way to specify the order in which applications start within any particular phase. The only thing that is currently guaranteed is that all applications starting in one phase will be started before the next phase starts.

[Brice Terzaghi (terzag)]

Thanks for your answer.

My problem was to start XCompMgr (composition manager) before the softwares that need it, i.e. Avant Window Navigator. I've solved it by launching the command from the .gnomerc file. As far as I understand, there is a launch order for these "launcher" scripts (.gnomerc, autostart.sh and so on), so it can be a workaround in some cases.

Although a launch order for applications set in Gnome session properties would still be nice to add "back". :)

[Vish (vish)]

Matthew Paul Thomas wrote on dup Bug #462404:

Nautilus has an "Open With" dialog that lists all the applications it knows about.

If that dialog is not a standard GTK widget, the first step is to make it a standard GTK widget. (That way Thunderbird could use it for letting you choose which application to open an attachment with, for example, in the same way that it uses the native GTK print dialog.)

Then, gnome-session-properties can use the same dialog for letting you choose a startup application.

[Vish (vish)]

Comment #37 was meant for Bug #140918 , closing papercut task as it was meant for Bug #140918!

[murrayf (murrayf07)]

I reported this bug long time ago, maybe it is solved now.

On 16/09/10 05:15, Bug Watch Updater wrote:
> ** Changed in: gnome-session
> Importance: Unknown => Medium
>

[Mahan (mahorad)]

This solution worked for me:

when you add programs to load at startup (from startup applications) some *.desktop files will be created at ~/.config/autostart. Now in order to change the startup order, you just need to rename those files (order them alphabetically as you desire). I tried giving them prefixes like 01XXX.desktop, 02YYY.desktop and etc. My problem is now solved but this might not be the total workaround.