therning.org/ magnus

Since no one on the Gnome mailing list seems to be able to answer these questions I thought I’d try some other venues for getting them answered. The audience for my blog isn’t that big, but just maybe there’s someone out there who knows the answers to these questions related to Gnome configuration. Mail one and mail two.

1: Running GUI tool after NM has brought up network

I run dropbox on my laptop, but their software is crap at handling that the network comes up only after the dropbox service has startedⁱ

I know of the possibility of dropping a file in /etc/NetworkManager/dispatcher.d/, but that doesn’t work in this case since I need the program to run “in my desktop”. Well, at least I haven’t managed to get the dropbox server to throw up an icon in my Gnome tool bar like it should, unless I run it from inside the desktop environment.

Any suggestions on how to solve this problem?

2: Changing background of the Gnome screensaver

I think Gnome comes with quite possibly the ugliest background for a screensaver I’ve ever seen. It’s a close-up on a green leaf or something. Absolutely hideous. I want to change it. To something nice, like a solid black. Actually just about anything else would do. But how?

GDM came with the same ugly background. Luckily I managed to find instructions on the Arch wiki to change GDM background. I’ve tried and failed to use a similar trick on the screensaver.

Please, help me escape the ugly background of the Gnome screensaver!

1. I’ve noticed no problem when network goes away and then comes back, dropbox picks that up just fine. But if the network isn’t there to start with, that it can’t handle. I’m somehow at a loss how to write a program that handles the former but not the latter. [back]

What do you think the following scriptⁱ will print?

foo() {
    true | while true; do
        false
        rc=$?
        if [ $rc -eq 1 ]; then
            return 1
        fi
    done
    echo $?
    return 0
}
 
foo || echo "Failed foo"

Run it and see. I suspect everyone but the script gurus out there will be surprised.

What about this script then?

bar () {
    local rc=0
    true | while true; do
        false
        rc=$?
        if [ $rc -eq 1 ]; then
            return 1
        fi
    done
    echo $?
    echo $rc
    return 0
}
 
bar

Surprised again?

I guess this means that scoping in bash is somewhat more complicated then I would have ever guessed.

1. The script is somewhat artificial, who would ever use the construct true | while ...? I’ve used this just to show the point while keeping the examples short. Feel free to replace that part with something more useful, like cat myfile | while read ....[back]