[Xastir] Autostart Xastir

[Max Harper]

Following the instructions at the provided link, I made the changes. It works, but with a twist. This machine runs AX.25, LDSPED, APRX and Xastir. It has a monitor connected but is normally used like a headless machine. I normally use SSH to make changes and VNC if I want to see Xastir. I can run most any aprs client on my PC or laptop and have it connect to LDSPED and see everything that the TNC sees. Since VNC doesn't actually show the console desktop, after a reboot I always had to VNC in and then start Xastir. At that point the console display would still show a login prompt. After making the change to the .config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart file I rebooted. The console was showing a login prompt as expected. About 20 minutes later when I used VNC to remote into the system I was looking at the desktop with Xastir running. But I could tell that it had been running for awhile because Xastir was displaying a full map full of stations and that takes awhile to populate. How did it know to run in the GUI session that only VNC uses? I'm not complaining because I always had to start Xastir manually before. I don't know what will happen if I login at the console and do a 'startx' to bring up a desktop. If it also starts Xastir then there would be two instances running. Can Xastir do that without coughing up a hairball?
Max KG4PID      From: Lee Bengston <lee.bengston at gmail.com>
 To: Xastir - APRS client software discussion <xastir at lists.xastir.org> 
 Sent: Tuesday, February 20, 2018 4:14 PM
 Subject: Re: [Xastir] Autostart Xastir
   
On Feb 20, 2018 12:52 PM, "Jason KG4WSV" <kg4wsv at gmail.com> wrote:

Pretty sure systemd would have the same problem as cron - the
application needs to be a child of the window manager so that the X
security is satisfied.


Agree


And Curt, if systemd scripts are easier than rc scripts then one of us
is looking at the wrong documentation.  :)


I had problems getting systemd scripts to work in Raspbian Jessie. Then I
tried Arch Linux on the Pi, and systemd worked great.  I did actually find
them easier than rc scripts, and it helped that Arch had its own systemd
documentation that was pretty good. I suspect Arch had an advantage of not
carrying the baggage of rc scripts prior to transitioning to systemd. Maybe
Stretch is better - haven't tried it on the Pi yet.


So back to the original question.  I read this:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=139224

and sure enough I have a file  .config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

pi at raspberrypi:~ $ ls .config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
.config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart

and it has some stuff in it:

pi at raspberrypi:~ $ cat .config/lxsession/LXDE-pi/autostart
@lxpanel --profile LXDE-pi
@pcmanfm --desktop --profile LXDE-pi
@xscreensaver -no-splash
@point-rpi


So i use my favorite editor to add this line to the end of that file:

@/usr/local/bin/xastir


and now xastir starts on boot.

-Jason
kg4wsv


Sounds definitive to me. Now I'm really curious if putting that same line
in this file will also work.

etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/startup

That file did work for me to start applications after LXDE started, but it
definitely wasn't in Raspbian Stretch at that time - was Wheezy if I
remember right.

Lee - K5DAT
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