Tuesday I decided to migrate from xfwm to openbox because xfwm was crashing too frequently. I always liked the clean interface of xfce but wanted to give a try to openbox.

Openbox is simply wonderfull!! I like it very much. The problem is that openbox has no panel or desktop functionality. So I found myself with a real fast environment (after login it took 2 to 3 seconds to be up and running) but without menu/panels.

I decided to stick with xfce-panel because I like the easiness of editing it offers and also the number of plugins available. The only thing I was missing were the wallpapers. So I wrote a little app to change them randomly!

You can find this app in the Code section, its called changebg! It is a simple application but it does the work.

Ok, now a little resume of what I did to get it all working. I’m using Debian lenny so installation was just an apt-get install openbox . I suggest also installing obconf so you can configure themes, settings and much more just right-clicking on the background and selecting ObConf.

Then you must configure openbox for your user. The files you are looking for are under ~/.config/openbox/ . If autostart.sh or menu.xml are not there you can copy them from /etc/xdg/openbox .

This is the file modified by ObConf. The only thing you cannot set with ObConf are shortcuts but you probably want to set them. Just look for the < keybord > part and you will see a couple of examples. I personally added tons of shortcuts: eg.




true
firefox




Just for reference: W = windows key, A = Alt , C = Ctrl

This script is launched when you login. Make sure it is executable.

I added just few lines to launch xfce-panel and changebg:

xfce4-panel &
sleep 1
changebg.sh &

Remember that you need to end each line with the “&” otherwise openbox won’t start.

I created /var/wallpapers and made it a public directory using the sticky bit (so more user can share and add wallpapers… otherwise it would be boresome).

Then copied the changebg.sh and the changebg program under /usr/local/bin.

changebg.sh starts changebg every minute unless a file called “changebg.disable” exists under ~/.config/ (I added this feature because I wanted an easy way to deactivate it).

The main problem I faced was that some images were small and I didn’t want them stretched. So I added those defines to the source:

#define DIR_PATH “/var/wallpapers/”
#define COMMAND “Esetroot -c “
#define RESIZE “-s “
#define NORES_KEY “.nores”

The program I’m using to set the background is Esetroot (you can find it under the Eterm package on Debian) that has the scale ( -s ) option. So if you don’t want an image to be resized you simply append .nores to its name (eg. debian.jpg.nores).

So now I have a randomic wallpaper every minute!

Minor fix:

This setup was working but I couldn’t shutdown the computer because the action button on xfce panel didn’t worked anymore. So I added my user to sudoers with a nopasswd on shutdown, and added two launchers to the panel. Easy fix.

Ok, that’s all, now I have my new enviroment!

On a lark (not a lart) I decided to waste a few minutes and installed the Debian funny-manpages and asr-manpages .deb packages. I tried the obvious man sex and man woman but then realized quickly there was no index to find all the rest.

Some quick digging into /usr/share/man found the “*.fun.gz” bundles, but that wasn’t entirely useful either because pre-existing entries, like echo or date returned the real entries, not the spoofs. A little for f in $(find /usr/share/man -name "*fun.gz"); do g=${f/gz/txt}; man -l $f > $g; done later, and I’ve got them all as text files instead of gzipped nroff files.

To save you the work and serve up the funny, I’ve posted them here.

1432 Elevator Model (on CD) Appendix H 111 112 // get current Door on Floor 113 Door currentFloorDoor = location.getDoor(); 114 115 // determine if Door on Floor is open 116 try { 117 118 boolean doorOpen = currentFloorDoor.isDoorOpen(); 119 120 // if Door on Floor is closed 121 if ( !doorOpen ) { 122 123 // press Floor Button 124 sendPersonMoveEvent( PERSON_PRESSING_BUTTON ); 125 pauseThread( 1000 ); 126 127 // register for Floor Door’s doorOpen event 128 this ); 129 130 // press Floor’s Button to request Elevator 131 Button floorButton = getLocation().getButton(); 132 floorButton.pressButton( getLocation() ); 133 134 // wait for Floor’s Door to open 135 sleep( TIME_WAITING ); 136 137 // unregister with Floor’s Door if too long 138 this ); 139 } 140 141 // if Door on Floor is open, ride Eelevator 142 else 143 enterAndRideElevator(); 144 } 145 146 // handle exception when interrupted from waiting 147 catch ( InterruptedException interruptedException ) { 148 149 // Person unregisters for Floor’s Door doorOpen event 150 this ); 15 15 // enter and ride Elevator when Door on Floor opens, 15 pauseThread( 1000 ); 15 enterAndRideElevator(); 15 } 15 15 // waiting for Elevator’s Door to open takes a second 15 pauseThread( 1000 ); 15 160 // begin walking away from Elevator 161 setMoving( true ); 162 Fig. H.13 Class Personrepresents the Personthat rides the Elevator. The Personoperates asynchronously with other objects (part 4 of 7).
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