Launching apps before user log in with GNOME - linux

Is it technically possible to launch a desktop app on Gnome (Fedora or any other RHEL based distro) without being forced to log in first into the user session?
I need to boot a desktop software on system start even if there is no user to log in at that moment. Setting the account to automatically log in is of course an option but highly insecure to leave a system in that state.

You may be able to run the software in the session that runs GDM. However, I'd suggest considering some alternatives.
What about running a VNC session (Fedora includes tigervnc), and running the app inside that? You could set up some dummy user account to do this, and have this happen automatically through either a systemd unit or maybe an #reboot crontab entry.

Related

How to keep an application open even after a user logs off and back on in RedHat 8.2 Linux?

I am looking for a way to keep an application (not a script) open in Red Hat Linux 8.2 when multiple users are logging on and off on the same machine. So if user A in one user group uses an application, logs off, I want that application to still be open when user B logs on. Is this possible? I tried looking at the GDM (GNOME display manager) for RedHat but wasn't able to make much of it.
I've tried the following methods, but none seem to work.
Thank you
You Can detach your session
tmux detach
And to attach to your session
tmux a -t SESSION_NAME

Running a program after system startup directlly from the linux kernel

I am trying to run my application directly from the linux kernel(without usage of cron or something like that). If I change ./init/init.c, it runs too early:
$ dmesg
...
[ 0.605657] TEST!!!
...
My idea is to launch an application after successful user login, but I can't find an appropriate function to use.
You're jumping to conclusions. Why do you want the kernel to do anything if you have the whole userspace running already? (you want it on user login)
Have a look at one of the standard mechanisms for this (depending on what's available in your system):
systemd user sessions
.profile / .xinit files for users
For advanced scenarios, maybe even socket activation for services.

Linux - Get to Shell before other driver boot up

How can I edit my startup scripts in linux so that I get to the login screen as soon as possible? I want all the other accessories (such as Bluetooth, Wifi, Ethernet) drivers to run ONCE I have gotten to the login screen and can now log into shell.
The only thing I can think of is to change the rmnologin order so that it runs before anything else. Is that a good idea?
Use a dependency based init tool like systemd or startpar, then if you still don't have prompt fast enugh dependency reasearch (or trial and error) would be in order. Also set your bios to fast boot. You can also boot into single user mode then change run level later if you want.

How to launch firefox from C program/daemon under Linux

I am having some problems with launching firefox from a Linux daemon written in C.
When I launch firefox on the machine itself (via terminal) from the command shell using /usr/bin/firefox it works OK and a firefox browser window lanunches as it should.
However if I try this within my C daemon using system("/usr/bin/firefox"), firefox launches its process in the terminal but the browser window is not opened?
A similar thing happens when I try to do this using remote terminal acces. It's something to do with telling the system to open firefox in window mode rather than trying to open it in terminal mode - but I dont know how to specify this using bash commands?
I am using Lubuntu 11.10 in my Linux System.
Any help is most appreciated.
There's a reason I asked why you're attempting to do what you want. I didn't want to get into great details in my comment.
Firefox on Unix is an X-Window process (most of the Linux/Unix desktops are based upon the X11 protocol which is the heart of X-Window). What X-Window does is separate the display of the program from the process running the program. For example, I am now running Firefox from a Linux box at work, but the Linux box is actually displaying the Firefox browser window at home on my Mac.
In order to do this, I had to:
Run X11 on my Mac. The X11 program creates a default X11 client display called 0.0 which pretty much says the first screen and the first instance of X11 running (computer geeks like counting from zero). The process runs in the background on my Mac. In a certain sense, it's really a server process and not a client because it's waiting on port 6000 for a client X11 process (Firefox) to tell it what to do.
Before I run firefox, I have to tell my Mac's X11 process that I grant the X11 server running Firefox to be able to display on my X11 client process. Otherwise, you can imagine someone spamming another person by continuously popping up Windows on their display. You can use the xhost program to do this.
In order to run Firefox on the Linux box, I have tell the Firefox process what X11 client I'm running it on. I can do this by setting the DISPLAY environment variable to something like "10.0.1.33:0.0". This means the X11 client is running the the machine on IP address 10.0.1.33, and I want you to use the first screen, and the first instance of the X11 client on that screen.
Now, I can run Firefox on my Linux box, and the display will display on my Mac.
The problem you're running into is that there's simply no X11 client when you're starting FireFox as a daemon process. An X11 client is associated with a user and a display of some sort. The display could be a virtual display, but there's got to be an X11 client that's running and is addressable in some way, so the process knows where to display the output.
By the way, you said daemon which has a very, very specific meaning in Unix/Linux. A daemon is a process that runs in the background and usually has a service (and a port) associated with it. For example, there's an FTP daemon called ftpd, the mail server uses the sendmail daemon, ssh has the sshd daemon. Daemons have no display associated with them.
However, it looks like you might be using the word to mean launching Firefox via another process. Is that true? If so, you'll have to make sure that Firefox knows the X11 display to use (there's a command line setting to use to specify the display), and that your X11 client (your login session) has given permission for another process to update your display with the program window.
Can you please explain what you're trying to do in a bit more detail? If you simply want to download a file from a remote http server (which of course is running the http daemon process called httpd), you should use curl or wget which don't require a display and are way simpler to use. If you're trying to do something else, let us know exactly what it is.
Firefox needs to know which display it should open on. When you run it from within a gui, even through a terminal emulator, the DISPLAY environment variable is set to the appropriate value. When you launch from the daemon, try system("/usr/bin/firefox -display=:0").
Make sure that the DISPLAY environment variable is properly set in your daemon to refer to the X server that you want your firefox to use.
If the daemon is run as a different user account than the user account that "owns" the X server that you want to use, you will also need to use xauth(1) to configure the authentication token to grant permission to use the X server.
Often times, it is far easier to use ssh -X to tunnel X and properly configure the xauth(1) tokens in one go than try to manage xauth(1) tokens yourself. Maybe adding ssh -X into your environment would be suitable, maybe not. (I've even used ssh -X root#localhost before when I needed to run an X client as root and didn't want to bother with configuring xauth(1) manually. ssh(1) is just so much easier.)

How to start a gtk application after booting up without logging in?

I have got a gtk application. I want it to start automatically when I boot up the system, such that instead of getting usual login screen, my application greets the user.
My application is a sort of cash dispensing application. So user should not even see the login screen of linux. Whenever machine in boot up, after loading services and all that, my application should appear on the screen. One should not have to put any password or login in anyway to start that application.
Now so far I have tried the following but all in vain.
I put the command in my /etc/rc.local file
/home/EXE/cashier
Then rebooted machine in run level 5. But nothing happens. I get the usual login screen. Other programs that do not involve any gui or gtk, they are automatically started in this manner but not the gtk application.
Then I put
xint /home/EXE/cahier
and later
xint /home/EXE/./cashier
But they too didn't work. When I looked into details, I found out that "An Xserver is already running on screen 0, cannot open other server" or something like that.
Then I tried booting into run level 3, this time it worked.
xint /home/EXE/.cachier
But in run level 3, the font and icon sizes are smaller. Moreover some windows do not cover the whole screen.
Now I will really appreciate a way to run my application in run level 5, without showing login screen automatically.
Regards
Edit
Currently, the application is running on fedora core 2
This is more a question about linux distribution startup than it is about Gtk applications. The specifics are going to depend on your distribution, but the essence is:
Disable the gdm facility, which is normally responsible for spawning your X server.
Run xinit (not "xint") to start the server manually. This takes a client as its argument. It may work to run your Gtk application directly (it needs to be smart enough to position and size itself instead of relying on a window manager), but more likely you will want to pick a window manager to run it in. The easiest way to do this is via script that you pass to xinit.

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