[Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

Jamesdawg1977 · 2020-08-11 17:43:47

I recently installed timeshift and can't seem to launch it from the application menu. I type the name, press enter, and nothing happens. The authentication screen doesn't come up, nothing. I tried launching it from the command line using sudo timeshift-gtk, and it runs perfectly, no errors or anything. I'm using AwesomeWM with rofi as the application launcher. I'd really appreciate any help, as I'd prefer to launch things from the application menu. And sorry if this is in the wrong place or formatted incorrectly, it's my first time posting.

Last edited by Jamesdawg1977 (2020-08-14 01:01:41)

StJimmy · 2020-08-11 18:55:25

It sounds like you're missing a PolKit agent - do any other applications that require privilege escalation work (e.g. lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings, if you happen to use LightDM)? If they do, you'll need to install a PolKit authentication agent. If they do, then the problem probably lies elsewhere.

Jamesdawg1977 · 2020-08-11 19:50:40

I do use LightDM actually, but I just installed lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings and I'm having the same issue, although I do have lxsession installed, so I'm not sure if that's the problem or not. I installed lxqt-policykit as well just to make sure, but that still didn't fix anything. Thank you for the response!

StJimmy · 2020-08-11 20:38:54

Jamesdawg1977 wrote:

I do use LightDM actually, but I just installed lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings and I'm having the same issue, although I do have lxsession installed, so I'm not sure if that's the problem or not. I installed lxqt-policykit as well just to make sure, but that still didn't fix anything. Thank you for the response!

So it seems it's a PolKit Auth Agent issue indeed then. Did you make sure to start the agent's daemon? You can also create a .desktop file in ~/.config/autostart to make it run on startup, if it for some reason didn't install (or enable) one to /etc/xdg/autostart.

Jamesdawg1977 · 2020-08-11 20:43:32

Okay, thank you for the help! You'll have to excuse me, I'm really new to Linux, but how would I start the agent's deamon, and/or create a .desktop file? I don't even have a ~/.config/autostart directory. Under /etc/xdg/autostart, I do have both lxpolkit.desktop and lxqt-policykit-agent.desktop though.

Last edited by Jamesdawg1977 (2020-08-11 20:46:04)

2ManyDogs · 2020-08-11 22:20:16

Moving to Newbie Corner.

StJimmy · 2020-08-12 08:32:52

Jamesdawg1977 wrote:

Okay, thank you for the help! You'll have to excuse me, I'm really new to Linux, but how would I start the agent's deamon, and/or create a .desktop file? I don't even have a ~/.config/autostart directory. Under /etc/xdg/autostart, I do have both lxpolkit.desktop and lxqt-policykit-agent.desktop though.

.config/autostart is likely not to exist unless you either created the directory yourself, or use a session management application to manage [disable or enable additional] autostart applications.
Starting the PolKit agent would be a simple case of running the lxqt-policykit-agent executable. To get it to run on logon, copy both .desktop files in /etc/xdg/autostart to ~/.config/autostart. This should *normally* suffice.
If you use a session manager (e.g. lxsession, xfce4-session) to manage your sessions, you could use their respective session management tools to enable it instead.

EDIT: Have you by any chance logged out and back in since you installed the agent? Those autostart desktop files will only do something when you restart your session - if they do (without having copied them to .config/autostart), you don't have to copy them there.

Last edited by StJimmy (2020-08-12 08:34:22)

Jamesdawg1977 · 2020-08-12 18:12:04

I have logged out and back in, several times now, both before and after copying over the files, and it still doesnt work. When I run lxqt-policykit-agent I get this:

(lxqt-policykit-agent:3725): Gtk-WARNING **: 13:04:50.025: Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine",
"Icon Theme not set. Fallbacking to Oxygen, if installed"
"Fallback Icon Theme (Oxygen) not found"
New PolkitAgentListener 0x558903632ca0
Adding new listener PolkitQt1::Agent::Listener(0x7ffc783b9c50) for 0x558903632ca0

At which point I can launch Timeshift from the application menu. However as soon as I hit ctrl+c or close the terminal, it stops working. I get "Unable to locate theme engine in module_path: "murrine"" when I launch a lot of applications through the terminal, and I think it may have something to do with a different issue I have, where Kate and a couple other qt applications have really bugged out appearances. I'm using lxappearance and qt5-styleplugins to get gtk and qt applications to look the same, but I have to re-select a theme before Kate looks normal, and even then, as soon as I close and reopen Kate, its back to being screwed up. That might be why I'm having issues here, but again it opens and works normally when I use the terminal to launch timeshift, although it still doesn't use the theme I set in lxappearance.

Edit: I did a little more looking into the murrine thing, installed that engine, and that part of the error message has gone away, although Kate still won't take the system theme I set in lxappearance. Regardless, I don't think that that is related to this issue. I also installed oxygen-icons and that part of the message is gone too, so now its just down to this:

"Icon Theme not set. Fallbacking to Oxygen, if installed"
New PolkitAgentListener 0x55973db8c8c0
Adding new listener PolkitQt1::Agent::Listener(0x7ffecdebef70) for 0x55973db8c8c0

Still, neither Timeshift nor the LightDM greeter settings will launch.

Last edited by Jamesdawg1977 (2020-08-12 18:37:32)

StJimmy · 2020-08-13 08:43:11

The GTK warnings shouldn't normally kill the program, neither should the icon theme (I believe it falls back to hicolor in any case anyway). The reason it gets killed when you press Ctrl+C or close the terminal is because you've not forked the process to the background (which would be done by appending an ampersand (&) to the command, i.e. 'lxqt-policykit-agent &'). If both applications do launch then, at least everything works as it should behind the scenes.

If the agent doesn't start when you log in, then you may need to copy the .desktop file(s) to ~/.config/autostart after all, and restart your session to see if it worked.

Regarding your issue with Qt applications: Qt applications didn't adhere to my GTK theme settings either, even after installing qt5-styleplugins. Adding

QT_QPA_PLATFORM_THEME=gtk2

to /etc/environment should fix this. A session restart should then also make that work.

Jamesdawg1977 · 2020-08-13 17:20:18

Alright thank you, that's good to know.

Regardless, even with the files copied over, it still doesn't autostart, even after restarting several times.

And wow thank you, that was bothering me so much. I had put that in my /etc/environment before, but I had left out the underscore in platform_theme.

StJimmy · 2020-08-13 18:03:25

Jamesdawg1977 wrote:

Alright thank you, that's good to know.
Regardless, even with the files copied over, it still doesn't autostart, even after restarting several times.

Do you use a display manager to start a session, or do you start X using startx? In the latter case, adding

lxqt-policy-agent &

to your .xinitrc, before the 'exec' line, should suffice. If that works, you can remove the desktop files from ~/.config/autostart (or even the whole autostart directory if you have nothing else in there).

EDIT: I just read up on this. So if you use either of the DMs listed on that wiki page, you can add the same line you would else add to .xinitrc to .xprofile instead.

Else, you could create a custom .desktop file in the autostart directory, adding only the basic stuff needed to make it run. Something like

[Desktop Entry]
Name=LXQt PolicyKit Authentication Agent
Exec=lxqt-policykit-agent
Terminal=false
Type=Application

ought to suffice, AFAIK.

Jamesdawg1977 wrote:

And wow thank you, that was bothering me so much. I had put that in my /etc/environment before, but I had left out the underscore in platform_theme.

You're welcome! I share your frustration, which makes it all the more rewarding when you do finally find out what you're actually supposed to do

Last edited by StJimmy (2020-08-13 18:09:43)

Jamesdawg1977 · 2020-08-13 18:50:09

Alright so I tried every combination of your instructions and it still doesn't work. First, I do use LightDM, which is on that list, but I didn't have a .xprofile in my home directory. So, I made one myself and put lxqt-policy-agent & in it, restarted, and it didn't work. So I put it in my .xinitrc as well, right above exec awesome, restarted, and still, no luck. So, I created a new .desktop file, named it lxqt-policykit-agent.desktop, and pasted what you wrote into it. Restarted again, and it still didn't work. Finally, I thought maybe the two fixes were conflicting, so I went back and removed the lxqt-policy-agent & from both .xinitrc and the .xprofile I made, restarted again (thank god I have an SSD), and it still wouldn't launch through the application menu. And even typing in xqt-policy-agent & to the terminal directly didn't seem to work properly, as it still held up the whole terminal so i couldn't input any new commands. Hitting ctrl+c closed it and opened up the terminal again.
Edit: I also added lxqt-policy-agent & to the bottom of /etc/lightdm/Xsession, right above exec, and still, no dice.

Last edited by Jamesdawg1977 (2020-08-13 18:58:53)

StJimmy · 2020-08-13 20:46:23

This has got to be the most time I've ever spent on trying to get an application to run on startup. Why seemingly nothing works is beyond my own comprehension.
LightDM should source .xprofile on session start, and as such should then execute lxqt-policykit-agent too. Why it (or any other way I suggested) doesn't start it leaves me puzzled.

[While we're at it, if you run it from a terminal with an ampersand (as you did), it will fork to the background, but stderr will still be output to the active terminal. Issuing Ctrl+C will then end the foreground stuff, and make it 'available' again. The application should however remain running, AFAIK.]

kermit63 · 2020-08-14 00:34:11

Jamesdawg1977 wrote:

... even typing in xqt-policy-agent & to the terminal directly didn't seem to work properly, as it still held up the whole terminal so i couldn't input any new commands. Hitting ctrl+c closed it and opened up the terminal again.

Try this instead of adding an ampersand (&) at the end of the command and hitting ctrl-c:
1. enter command normally.
2. press ctrl-z. This will momentarily stop the command execution and return you to the command prompt.
3. enter "bg" (without the quotes). This will resume the halted command in the background.
4. you can now close the terminal without stopping the background execution of the command.

Jamesdawg1977 · 2020-08-14 01:00:16

Alright so I did a lot more research and yeah I have no clue why any of your suggestions didn't work, but regardless, I'm not sure if this is the right or best or most elegant way of doing it, but I solved the issue. I edited my crontab with the following lines:

# m h dom mon dow command
@reboot lxqt-policy-agent &

I restarted and boom, lxqt now runs on launch, and I can open Timeshift from the application menu. Thank you so much StJimmy, I never would've figured out what the issue was without your help!

StJimmy · 2020-08-14 08:59:53

Jamesdawg1977 wrote:

Alright so I did a lot more research and yeah I have no clue why any of your suggestions didn't work, but regardless, I'm not sure if this is the right or best or most elegant way of doing it, but I solved the issue. I edited my crontab with the following lines:
# m h dom mon dow command
@reboot lxqt-policy-agent &
I restarted and boom, lxqt now runs on launch, and I can open Timeshift from the application menu. Thank you so much StJimmy, I never would've figured out what the issue was without your help!

You're most welcome. I'm glad you got it solved in the end, one way or another!

kermit63 wrote:

Try this instead of adding an ampersand (&) at the end of the command and hitting ctrl-c:
1. enter command normally.
2. press ctrl-z. This will momentarily stop the command execution and return you to the command prompt.
3. enter "bg" (without the quotes). This will resume the halted command in the background.
4. you can now close the terminal without stopping the background execution of the command.

Huh, I guess you learn something new every day. I'll be sure to keep that in mind.

ewaller · 2020-08-14 14:30:23

kermit63 wrote:

Try this instead of adding an ampersand (&) at the end of the command and hitting ctrl-c:
1. enter command normally.
2. press ctrl-z. This will momentarily stop the command execution and return you to the command prompt.
3. enter "bg" (without the quotes). This will resume the halted command in the background.
4. you can now close the terminal without stopping the background execution of the command.

You need one more step for that to work.

5. Run the command disown so that decendents of your shell process are not terminated when the shell exits

kermit63 · 2020-08-14 23:53:19

ewaller wrote:

You need one more step for that to work.
5. Run the command disown so that decendents of your shell process are not terminated when the shell exits

Thanks for the added info.

Last edited by kermit63 (2020-08-14 23:54:48)

Arch Linux

#1 2020-08-11 17:43:47

[Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#2 2020-08-11 18:55:25

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#3 2020-08-11 19:50:40

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#4 2020-08-11 20:38:54

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#5 2020-08-11 20:43:32

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#6 2020-08-11 22:20:16

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#7 2020-08-12 08:32:52

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#8 2020-08-12 18:12:04

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#9 2020-08-13 08:43:11

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#10 2020-08-13 17:20:18

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#11 2020-08-13 18:03:25

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#12 2020-08-13 18:50:09

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#13 2020-08-13 20:46:23

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#14 2020-08-14 00:34:11

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#15 2020-08-14 01:00:16

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#16 2020-08-14 08:59:53

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#17 2020-08-14 14:30:23

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

#18 2020-08-14 23:53:19

Re: [Solved] Some apps only launch from command line, not application menu

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