How to use the KDE application link to start a console app in a specified working dir

[James Richard Tyrer]

Parzival Herzog wrote:
> I am a Windows habituated person learning to use Linux and KDE, currently I am 
> having the following problem, and neither KDE docs nor Google can shed any 
> light on it:
> 
> I am trying to automatically start the spambayes proxy server (a Python 
> script), at login. I thought that placing an entry in the ~/.kde/Autostart 
> directory would do the trick. So I created a "Link to Application" in this 
> directory. I tried several things as the "Command",
> 
> 1, the full path to the python script that implemets the spambayes server
> 2, python (the full path to the script)
> 3, a bash script containing a cd to the spambayes server working directory
>    (wherein it finds a configuration file) and the command (2) above.
> 
> In all of these cases the "Run in terminal" option is checked.
> 
> Then I double click the link to test this. A terminal window briefly appears 
> and then disappears. (BTW, if I type command (1), or (2)  above in a Konsole, 
> the server always starts and there are no problems)
> 
> I would like (a) to be able to have the terminal window not close on the 
> failure I describe above, so I can read the Python traceback and possibly 
> diagnose the problem; and (b) be able to set the working directory that the 
> server is started in on automatic start.
> 
> I have tried using "-i" as a Terminal option, assuming that it would set the
> bash -i (interactive) option, and thus bash would not terminate, but this
> has no detectable effect.
> 
> There seems to be no documentation or help tips whatsoever about the Execute 
> tab of this dialog, so what the "Panel Embedding" section means is absolutely
> obscure, and what the "Terminal options" would be is also unclear. So (c)
> I would like to know what these data in the dialog are supposed to do.
> 
> Can anyone help me to accomplish my goals, or point me to more detailed
> documentation that might help in this case?

My thought is that you don't want to start an application using a virtual 
terminal, but rather you want to start a virtual terminal which runs an 
application.

That is, your command would be:

	konsole -e "spambayes <options>"

At least this is what I would try.

If you do it this way, you can NOT close the konsole -- it will kill the 
application -- unless it is a daemon (or something like that).

--
JRT

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