[Xastir] Autostart Xastir

[Steven Morrison]

On 2/19/2018 2:16 PM, Joseph LaFerla wrote:
> Hi
>
> Finally, I am actively trying to find a way to start Xastir after bootup of the Raspberry pi gui.  The other day we had a power  failure which caused the pi to reboot.  Since I have until now always started xastir manually from a terminal window with xastiur &, when the power came back xastir did not start up.  I have searched the archives and online for something that works.  Problem is that the xastir executable has to run after the gui comes up.  I don’t think this issue is specific to a rpi.  I would think the same consideration would apply to any Linux gui that runs after Linux has booted up.  Can anybody outline the steps I need to do to make this happen?
>
> Thanks as always.
>
> Joe
> VA3JLF
Joe,

This is a copy of  an email I sent to some friends last August, 
describing how I got Xastir to start automatically  at reboot on my 
Raspberry PI.  Raspbian is going through some changes as the system 
adopts to the new systemd startup process, but parts are still handled 
by the window manager:

Hi All,

I finally got my Raspberry Pi to automatically load Xastir on startup 
and reboot. I've been wrestling with this for a long time off and on, 
and Finally got it to work last night.


I had been trying to use the new systemd startup process and had a 
.desktop unit file defined but it never worked, and I could never even 
find any failure messages.  It turns out the default X-windows manager 
is LXDE, not Gnome or KDE.  Apparently LXDE hasn't implemented all of 
the systemd startup processing. Last night I finally found a reference 
to auto starting LXDE jobs that worked .


Here are the basic steps I followed:

1. Define a simple shell program: /sudo nano 
/usr/local/bin/start_xastir.sh /*/
/*

*#!/bin/bash
# This shell starts Festival text to speech program than starts the 
xastir APRS$

echo "Starting  start_xastir script"

xterm -e festival &
echo "Festival Started"
Sleep 5

xterm -e xastir &

exit
*

2. add the script to the USER auto start entries for LXDE: /sudo nano 
//|~/.config/lxsession/LXDE/autostart|/

|(this path may also show LXDE-pi instead of LXDE. Both point to the 
same locations on my system)
|


*@lxpanel --profile LXDE**
**@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE**
**@xscreensaver -no-splash**
**@sh /usr/local/bin/start_xastir.sh**
*

3. Reboot system.

Festival and Xastir should start terminal windows and be started when 
user pi signs in to the system. On my system xastir and start_xastir.sh 
are on /usr/local/bin and festival is on /usr/bin.

Good luck,

Steve

KE5SXT