Autostart

Blinkenshell now offers a way for you to autostart programs when the system boots. You can use this to start your screen with irssi as soon as the system boots, so you won't miss any conversations on IRC after a reboot for example.

It's very easy to use, you create a file named .autostart in your home directory and make it executable. You can also use the program autostart-setup to set it up automatically.

The .autostart-file will be executed with your user privileges when the system boots. Any output (stdout and stderr) from the script is redirected to ~/.autostart.out

Here is an example that starts a screen (in detached mode) and runs irssi in it (edit the file with nano ~/.autostart for example):

#!/bin/bash
screen -U -S auto -d -m irssi

Remember to give the script executable permission: chmod u+x ~/.autostart

The "-U" option is only used when running Unicode (UTF-8), if you're not using Unicode you should not use this option.

Do not start any programs that don't finish right away. For example, you can't start irssi directly, since this will keep running until you give the exit command. You can also not run a screen without the flags -d -m (start detached). If you are in doubt, ask in the chat before you do anything.

CategoryHowto