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Hello i am trying to open two shell scripts on reboot.
Crontab My crontab is the following
@reboot sh /home/pi/Desktop/autoStart.sh
autoStart.sh in this shell script is the following
#!/bin/sh
cd /home/pi/Desktop
sudo xterm -e ./startNodeServer.sh &
sudo xterm -e ./startPythonScanner.sh
Error The error i get is
xterm: Xt error: Can't open display: %s
xterm: DISPLAY is not set
Thanks for the help
The answer is in the error message. DISPLAY is not set. Cron is not a part of your desktop environment, so it does not know where to display the xterm.
If you open an xterm normally, and ask echo $DISPLAY, it will tell you soemthing like
:0.0
That is the display identifier where windows would be displayed. Unfortunately, you cannot just put
DISLPLAY=':0.0'
in your script because
The solution depends on what kind of window manager you are running. If default raspian, it would probably be something like:
raspi-config)@/home/pi/Desktop/autoStart.sh in /home/pi/.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart You CAN NOT start GUI scripts with crontab - just boot to the GUI and use .config/lxpanel/LXDE-pi/autostart to start your scripts.
To run an application you simply add it on a line starting with a '@' character.
@lxterminal
xhost + and put * * * * * /usr/bin/xterm -display :0.0 -e sleep 5 in your crontab, you'll see that you can start GUI stuff from crontab. But xhost + is of course bad practice.
– Ljm Dullaart
Oct 26 '19 at 11:09
@reboot is executed after the XServer has started. If not, there is no XServer that can display the xterm. And because @reboot is sometimes used to initialize e.g. special network drivers, I doubt that the X-Server is running when the script is performed. Your answer is helpful (uv), but the comment might confuse the OP.
– Peter Paul Kiefer
Oct 26 '19 at 11:47
Starting programs and scripts are controlled by systemd with Unit files. With it you can define the needed environment to run the program. But because we know nothing about your scripts and what they are doing I can only suggest a general template to start a script with GUI. Create a new service with:
rpi ~$ sudo systemctl --force --full edit node-server.service
In the empty editor insert these statements, save them and quit the editor:
[Unit]
Description=Node Server
Wants=graphical.target
After=graphical.target
[Service]
Environment=DISPLAY=:0.0
Environment=XAUTHORITY=/home/pi/.Xauthority
WorkingDirectory=/home/pi/Desktop
ExecStart=/usr/bin/xterm -c /home/pi/Desktop/startNodeServer.sh
[Install]
WantedBy=graphical.target
Enable and start the new service with:
rpi ~$ sudo systemctl enable --now node-server.service
Check with:
rpi ~$ systemctl status node-server.service
Create and start just a second python-scanner.service for startPythonScanner.sh in the same way. Maybe you have to define Wants=node-server.service and After=node-server.service in its [Unit] section. If it doesn't work you have to look what additional environment settings are needed or you may elaborate your question.
