Arch Linux

ChrispyChris3

Member

Registered: 2018-10-08

Posts: 20

dmenu and Bash Script Issue

Hey there,

I've been working to get a script in /home/chris/bin to run and have had no luck. I've searched around and tried multiple different approaches but haven't had luck yet. I did at least get my scripts to be indexed by dmenu, so they appear but when I hit enter to select the scripts, they do nothing. My path is set in .bash_profile and I run i3, I've heard this can be an issue and even tried setting the path to $PATH in .xinitrc but still no luck when trying to execute the scripts. The scripts do work within the terminal, so I'm at a bit of a loss. I would love any recommendations!

Thank you,

Chris

iwuvkittens

Member

Registered: 2025-05-30

Posts: 2

Re: dmenu and Bash Script Issue

they do nothing because dmenu prints the selected entry to stdout, you will have to do additional bashery to get anything to happen

lmn

Member

Registered: 2021-05-09

Posts: 79

Re: dmenu and Bash Script Issue

The program `dmenu` itself just acts a visual filter program.
The included script to run executables is `dmenu_run`.

How do you run dmenu? Can you test dmenu_run in a terminal and check if it is working from there?

dmenu_path is used to generate the list of executables for dmenu_run.
Are your scripts in the output of dmenu_path?

I did at least get my scripts to be indexed by dmenu

What exactly did you do to index the scripts?

How is your environment set up, i.e. when and how is your PATH set when you call dmenu?

The scripts do work within the terminal

How do you execute the scripts? Are the execute bits set for those?

When invoking dmenu_run the PATH variable must be set to include your directory. How this is done depends on how your environment is set up. You can find more information in the wiki.

Edit: Did you try clearing the cache file?

Last edited by lmn (2025-06-17 10:16:28)