How to Set Programs Starting Automatically–Part 2. After System Initialization

This is the second part of the setting programs starting automatically. Part 1 start programs at system initialization is here.

Method 2: Add your Program to Profiles and bashrc

1. Profiles

Right before user is logged into the system, there’re certain settings configured. The system wide configuration is done through the script /ect/profile.

And there is also a profile for each user at home directory. There’re several possible names for it. The system will search for .bash_profile first, if not found, it will look for .bash_login, if not found also, it will finally use .profile.

If you want to execute some programs/scripts right before user is logged in, these are the files you should edit.

2. Bashrc

After user is logged in, if your system doesn’t have a UI environment, the text terminal should have been started already. The script /etc/bash.bashrc (for all users) and ~/.bashrc (for a specific user) are executed.

If you want to execute some programs/scripts every time you start up a text terminal, you can put them into these files.

Method 3: Add your Program to Gnome Start Up Programs

In Ubuntu (I guess the same in other gnome desktop system), you can set Startup Applications under System=>Preferences=>Startup Applications.

You can add your program by specifying the name and command.

Once you add a program, a configuration is created under ~/.config/autostart/ directory. For example, my Ubuntu system has Dropbox installed and it’s configured to start up when Gnome starts up. The configuration file is located at ~/.config/autostart/dropbox.desktop

Method 4: Use cron to Start your Program

cron is utility to execute scheduled commands, like task scheduler in Windows. Although it’s mainly used to execute scheduled task, you can also make use of it to auto start up your programs/scripts.

The idea is simple. Add a cron entry to run a wrapper script every minute. In the wrapper script, check if the program/scripts is already started. If not, start the program/script, otherwise, do nothing.

1. To configure a cron task, use

sudo crontab -e

Add the line to the configuration file,

* * * * * /home/xxx/xxx/autostart.sh

You can check your configuraiton by entering

sudo crontab -l

2. Write the autostart.sh script similar to the sample below,

#!/bin/bash

if [ -z "$(pgrep myprogram)" ] 

then

    /home/xx/xx/myprogram &

fi

The & is added to run the program at background.

If you want to learn more details about cron, you can refer to here.