How to access X display from a cron job when using gdm3?

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Open a window on a remote X display (why “Cannot open display”)?

I'm trying to run a cron job that needs access to my X session. I know my X session will always be :0, so part of it is easy:

/30 * * * * DISPLAY=:0 command

but the problem is that gdm3 no longer uses $HOME/.Xauthority; instead it uses /var/run/gdm3/auth-for-anthony-XXXXXX/database where the X's change each login.

Other than symlinking $HOME/.Xauthority to the GDM3 file each login (or editing crontab each login, etc—automatically in .xsession of course), is there some way to get the cron job working?

Solution

I would assume to try come up with a script which would execute a shell (in login mode, or set the $HOME variable) and access the Xsession. I would doubt this since executing a cronjob would not provide a valid tty for the process and inturn would be difficult to access the Xsession. However, I am curious to know what purpose are you trying to solve by accessing your Xsession? like launch an xterm or browser? If you are trying to do this purely for automation on a headless terminals, then I would suggest you look for other alternatives like automation tools with selenium.

Comments

[Admin]

maybe we can come up with a bash script, but needs to know, is the XXs are numbers or letters or both ? is the old one deleted each logout ?

[Admin]

@HananN. They are letters and numbers, e.g., JZ7Kpd. Probably from mkdtemp. They likely aren't guessable, and /var/run/gdm3 is 0711, so you can't list it (except as root)

[Admin]

Er. You edited this to basically say "what ways can this problem be solved other than the ways it was solved in a duplicate question"? Is there something wrong with those solutions?

[Admin]

@MichaelMrozek: Well, they're sort of kluge-ish, but they have to be because they're not making any assumptions (e.g., gdm3). Turns out gdm3 offers a different way to do this, somehow, through its system dbus API. Maybe. Haven't figured it out yet. (Honestly: I'm one of the two close votes. Maybe this question would better be closed as a duplicate, then I could ask and hopefully answer a new, separate question on the gdm3 dbus interface.)

[Admin]

@derobert Ok, a new question sounds good. I'll roll this back and close it

[derobert]

Well, (a) the only things required to access an X session are the DISPLAY and (if enabled) the xauth cookies. A controlling terminal, much less tty, is not needed. So all you need for cron is to set DISPLAY and XAUTHORITY, the problem is XAUTHORITY changes; (b) The purpose is to make a dcop call to the Amarok running in my session (yes, I currently plan to run Amarok 1.4 forever.)—in particular, to make it save the current playlist routinely.

[derobert]

Well, I could add another key on login, but that'd be about the same as just copying the existing key on login.

[derobert]

Well, yeah, I could turn off authentication on the X server. Or I could run su -c 'rm -Rf /'. Both are generally bad ideas.

[Nikhil Mulley]

Ok, out of my mind. I would still go on to think, why not try with ssh to the same host with -Y with ForwardX11Trusted directive set in ssh_config. Good luck.

[derobert]

ssh -Y forwards the local display over the SSH session, it does this by connecting locally, so it needs DISPLAY and XAUTHORITY. Honestly, I like the spirit of coming up with random workarounds; but there are already several fairly good ones in the question—the symlinking of ~/.Xauthority being the best, IMO. Gilles's answer on the other question has several more. I'm hoping there is a non-woraround way to do this...

[Nikhil Mulley]

Agreed but was getting myself over puzzled on this and desperate to see something as workaround over this seemingly known one. Still.. if you think the command is to be executed locally on which the X is running then perhaps grabbing the environment of gdm processid for Xauthority file and perhaps extract/merge with xauth could help I suppose.

[derobert]

Oooh, I've found a dbus API—will post an answer once I figure out how to use it. org.gnome.DisplayManager /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Display1 org.gnome.DisplayManager.Display.GetX11AuthorityFile if anyone wants to beat me to it.

[Nikhil Mulley]

Wonderful! Looking forward to hear more from ya :-)