Conky was killed with SDDM Splash Screen

neuromancer93 · 2020-03-15 15:41:24

As the subject suggests, I want to autostart conky as a desktop plugin.
In Plasma Settings -> Autostart, I made conky as autostart, the command by default was conky --daemonize --pause=1 .
Then I rebooted. When I finished entering my login credentials , and conky appears with the SDDM splash screen. However, when SDDM splash screen fades and plasma desktop was loaded, conky was killed too.

Why?

seth · 2020-03-15 16:02:43

Was it actually "killed"?
Does it terminate or maybe segfault or is the process perhaps still running?
What does your conky config look like?
Can you run it by hand after the session started?

neuromancer93 · 2020-03-16 02:50:22

I checked ps -aux|grep conky , pretty sure it wasn't running.
And I am able to start conky manually by conky --daemonize.
Here is my conkyrc, it executed a exterior python file, but since conky can actuallly autostart on SDDM splash, I think the problem is not on the python file?

-- vim: ts=4 sw=4 noet ai cindent syntax=lua
--[[
Conky, a system monitor, based on torsmo

Any original torsmo code is licensed under the BSD license

All code written since the fork of torsmo is licensed under the GPL

Please see COPYING for details

Copyright (c) 2004, Hannu Saransaari and Lauri Hakkarainen
Copyright (c) 2005-2012 Brenden Matthews, Philip Kovacs, et. al. (see AUTHORS)
All rights reserved.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.

This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License
along with this program.  If not, see <http://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.
]]
conky.config = {
    alignment = 'top_right',
    background = no,
    border_width = 4,
    cpu_avg_samples = 2,
	default_color = 'white',
    default_outline_color = 'white',
    default_shade_color = 'white',
    draw_borders = false,
    draw_graph_borders = true,
    draw_outline = false,
    draw_shades = false,
    use_xft = true,
    font = 'PityheroFontFamily:style=Mono',
    gap_x = 5,
    gap_y = 60,
    minimum_height = 5,
	minimum_width = 5,
    net_avg_samples = 2,
    no_buffers = true,
    out_to_console = false,
    out_to_stderr = false,
    extra_newline = false,
    own_window = true,
    own_window_class = 'Conky',
    own_window_type = 'override',
	own_window_transparent = false,
	own_window_colour='000000',
	own_window_argb_visual = true,
	own_window_argb_value = 100,
	own_window_hints = 'undecorated,below,sticky,skip_taskbar,skip_pager',
	stippled_borders = 0,
    update_interval = 60,
    uppercase = false,
    use_spacer = 'none',
    show_graph_scale = false,
    show_graph_range = false
}

conky.text = [[
	${font PityheroFontFamily:style=Mono:pixelsize=25}${color white}${exec python3 .todayis.py}${font}
	${color white}2019.07.22 - ${time %Y.%m.%d %H:%M}
]]

Wild Penguin · 2020-03-16 07:28:26

Hi neuromancer93,

Last time I was playing around with conky, I noticed quite soon it is almost unusable in KDE4 at the time. I believe Plasma is not that much different.

It has something to do with the fact that Plasma (and some other more modern DEs) are a bit more advanced DEs than what was mainstream when conky was made. It can draw on the root window or some special desktop windows. But more modern DEs, such as Plasma, have more complicated widgets etc to take care of, and the old method how desktops worked is not usable for them. This philosophy of how the DE works, conflicts legacy-type decorations, such as conky. Plasma (and it's desktop along with it's widget system) will not be aware of conky, and this will cause a problem (I'm not a programmer, but trying to explain in layman's terms the issue as far as I've understood it).

This issue is very well documented in conky manpage and IIRC also elsewhere. IIRC there was some workarounds, but none were worth the hassle for me back then. You may try to play around with the own_window_type -parameter (as outlined in the man page), however IIRC nothing I made made conky usable that way in KDE4. I can kind of hack a conky window to be visible by setting "own_window_type" = 'normal' (and then playing around with application specific settings to remove decorations, make it fixed etc.). Also, see an example configuration here: https://forum.kde.org/viewtopic.php?t=133242 .

It can be really difficult to hack it to be integrated seamlessly into Plasma. If you succeed, do post your experience and setup here!

IIRC there may have been a KDE4 specific widget which can run conky, but it was not pretty/customizeable the way I'd want it to be (but that was for KDE4).

IMHO, if you want conky, you're better off use something a bit more minimalistic (i3, enligthement and whatnot... probably LXDE or similar could also work).

EDIT: To summarize, I believe OPs problem is: conky is not visible, since KDE Plasma desktop is drawing above it (it is not killed but still running)

Last edited by Wild Penguin (2020-03-16 07:42:16)

seth · 2020-03-16 08:02:09

Not if he's using that config

…
    own_window = true,
    own_window_class = 'Conky',
    own_window_type = 'override',
…

Also he claims to be able to run it afterwards.

The splash is actually part of the session and an override_redirect window itself. It would be a super-stupid move, but maybe the session xkills away all override_redirect windows?
Check coredumpctl on whether conky maybe legit crashes and try to change the own_window_type to "normal" (for a start)

Wild Penguin · 2020-03-16 08:07:21

seth wrote:

Not if he's using that config
...

Oh, I somehow missed that part. I should learn to read

FWIW it crashes here immediately if I set own_window_type = 'override', with --daemonize (and override) it seems to also crash right away (while running from the DE).

I indeed get best results with own_window_type = 'normal', and then fiddle with the application / window specific setting within Plamsa (i.e. set to lowest window, and to all desktops, remove decorations etc.). However, it will float "on top" of everything while changing desktops (it will immediately go back to bottom after switching is complete). Otherwise, than this little beaty error, it seems quite functional with that setup. What would / should override achieve in addition? I'm not familiar with window types...

Last edited by Wild Penguin (2020-03-16 08:09:36)

seth · 2020-03-16 08:23:26

override_redirect windows are ignored by the WM and just put on top of the stack.
Do you have a backtrace of the crash?

If you're coronabored, you might want to play w/ xwinwrap to handle conky (-ni will alow it to ignore input, ie. you can still click your desktop throug the conky window)

Arch Linux

#1 2020-03-15 15:41:24

Conky was killed with SDDM Splash Screen

#2 2020-03-15 16:02:43

Re: Conky was killed with SDDM Splash Screen

#3 2020-03-16 02:50:22

Re: Conky was killed with SDDM Splash Screen

#4 2020-03-16 07:28:26

Re: Conky was killed with SDDM Splash Screen

#5 2020-03-16 08:02:09

Re: Conky was killed with SDDM Splash Screen

#6 2020-03-16 08:07:21

Re: Conky was killed with SDDM Splash Screen

#7 2020-03-16 08:23:26

Re: Conky was killed with SDDM Splash Screen

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