Linux equivalent of Windows "Startup" folder

Question

I want to run a program when my embedded Linux's desktop has started up, in the same way as Windows runs programs in the "Startup" folder. How can I do this?

Specifically, my target hardware is Beaglebone Black, the Debian variant (rev C board). The Window Manager is the default one.

Answer 1

In Linux these are called init scripts and usually sit in /etc/init.d. How they should be defined varies between different distros but today many use the Linux Standard Base (LSB) Init Script format.

Good readings on this: https://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts https://www.debian-administration.org/article/28/Making_scripts_run_at_boot_time_with_Debian

Answer 2

There are multiple ways to start a program, it turns out. LXDE - the window manager - supports auto-start of .desktop files places in either ~/.config/autostart or /etc/xdg/autostart - hooray!

http://wiki.lxde.org/en/Autostart

Except... though I can run a simple program as proof-of-concept in this way, when I try to run mine, it fails. I can't figure out why. The file

.xsession-errors.old

contains X server errors ("resource temporarily unavailable").

I am now using another mechanism - running the code from a shell script (this is necessary because I need to specify a working directory for the program). This uses the "autostart" file in /etc/xdg/lxsession/, and at least it works. Well kind of. I either have to "sleep 5" before running, or prefixing the run with an @ symbol which forces a retry if it fails. It looks a little like something my code is dependent on is not in place at the precise time the autostart mechanism finds it. I can find no way of ensuring startup order. This is plainly a crock of stinky stuff.