Start KDE Connect from command line

[Duncan]

Bennett Piater posted on Thu, 08 Oct 2015 19:28:19 +0200 as excerpted:

> Hello,
> I'm using i3wm instead of plasma, but I also want to use KDE connect. It
> works great, just like all other KDE programs that I use; However, I
> can't find a way to automatically start it at login.
> 
> There is indicator-kdeconnect, but it doesn't work outside of Unity.
> 
> Is there a way to start KDE connect from the command line? I don't need
> a system tray icon, all I want is to have the daemon running.
> 
> Thanks in advance,
> Bennett
> 
> Please CC me in the reply as I am not subscribed to this list!

[Replying to list and direct-mail as requested.]

I'm neither a kde-connect user, nor an i3wm user, so the help I can 
provide is rather general/limited, but maybe it'll be enough.

In general, most DEs have some way to start things at startup, and if 
they don't, it's normally possible to add the desired apps to your xinitrc 
or the like, tho the precise place to list them depends on whether you 
login at the CLI and startx (or similar), or run a *DM graphical login, 
and choose a session from there.  (FWIW, I do the CLI login and startx 
thing and have been for years, without a *DM even installed, so I'm 
obviously more familiar with the startx/xinit method, thus the mention of 
xinitrc.)

But you do need to know what command to run, as well as what particular 
file to put it in.  If I didn't know what executable to run, I'd try 
finding it a few different ways, here.

1) Query your package manager (PM) to see what files its package 
installs.  Here on gentoo I'd use equery files kdeconnect (I already 
looked it up to ensure that's the name of the package here on gentoo).  

1a) Presumably executables will be located in 
/usr/bin/ or the like and thus should be fairly easy to spot.

1b) Alternatively, look for *.desktop files and open them in a text 
editor to see what they run.


2) If your PM doesn't return anything, maybe because the package isn't 
installed, there's a very handy site called rpmfind.net, that can help 
you figure out other possible names for the package and/or what the 
package contains.  Note that rpmfind.net is useful even if your distro 
(like mine) doesn't normally do rpms, since with some differences due to 
how packages are split, etc, packages should contain pretty much the same 
set of files, regardless of distro or package type.

Since I don't have kdeconnect installed here, my PM query wouldn't return 
a file list.  However, rpmfind is quite helpful.  Among other things, I 
see there's a couple packages, libkdeconnect, and kdeconnect-kde.


Looking at kdeconnect-kde, I see in the files list a binary called 
kdeconnect-cli.  Presumably that's what you'd run.  If it's like most kde-
based programs, running it at the command-line with the --help option 
should print out a list of app-specific options, plus offering --help-kde 
and --help-qt for the more general options (like setting the initial 
window title/caption and icon, the X-display to connect to if you're 
running several, etc) provided by kde and qt, respectively.


3) Failing that, there's always a google (using a google provider other 
than google, if you like).  As long as the name isn't so common you get 
too much other stuff, that works pretty well.  kdeconnect should be 
unique enough to be googlable.  Indeed, it seems to be (just checked).  

Tho googling the information you're looking for can often work, when it's 
just a binary name your looking for, etc, generally the PM query or 
rpmfind.net are more direct routes to that info. =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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