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[Solved] openbox enhancements?

Graphical Environments, Managers, Multimedia & Desktop questions.
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kent_dorfman766
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[Solved] openbox enhancements?

#1 Post by kent_dorfman766 »

I'm generally OK with openbox as a window manager (step up from my old favorite fvwm), except that its menu configuration system doesn't support variable expansion. It is XML based and the execute tag expects a string literal, with no obvious way to expand an environment var inline. Since I use two distinct and independent X11 screens I need it to alllow something like the following example

<execute>sudo su - gearth /opt/google/googleearth/earth -display ${DISPLAY}</execute>

Interesting thing about the above is that since google code should never be trusted, it runs in its own uid sandbox, where I can keep them from snooping.

Anyone aware if the original author is still supporting the package? Their doctoral candidate academic page hasn't been updated since around 2014. LOL
Last edited by kent_dorfman766 on 2023-02-06 21:20, edited 1 time in total.

reinob
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Re: [Software] openbox enhancements?

#2 Post by reinob »

maybe something like

Code: Select all

<execute>bash -c 'sudo su - gearth /opt/google/googleearth/earth -display ${DISPLAY}'</execute>
would, in theory, pass the whole command (including the unevaluated ${DISPLAY}) to bash, which would do the variable expansion?

I'll see if I can test it..

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kent_dorfman766
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Re: [Software] openbox enhancements?

#3 Post by kent_dorfman766 »

thank you...that actually solved the particular use-case. I've had great difficulty in the past when passing args to things that use the exec() series of calls. So it appears that the DISPLAY from the local X11 server instance is being evaluated when doign the subshell call.

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