Trying to open a browser on startup on my Raspberry Pi

Question

I have Raspbian running on my Raspberry Pi, and I want to have a browser appear when it starts up. I am able to open a Midori window to the right page on start up, but my problem is that I receive a "cannot resolve host name" error, such like I would get if I was not connected to the internet. I followed the instructions listed on http://www.niteoweb.com/blog/raspberry-pi-boot-to-browser which were to enter in the command line:

$ sudo nano /etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart

Comment everything and add the following lines:

@xset s off
@xset -dpms
@xset s noblank
@midori -e Fullscreen -a http://google.com

This process does open a Midori window on startup, but with the error mentioned above. If the page is refreshed then it works, but I want to be able to bring up a url without having a mouse or keyboard. I read that at the beginning of startup, internet may not be connected yet, so I created a bash script that delayed the process by twenty seconds before opening the Midori window. This did no work either, the same error persisted. I have also tried the process with chromium, to no avail as well.

Solution

On my Pi I have a script that checks if I have an IP address before it does anything else:

IP.py

import socket
from time import sleep

def checknetwork():
    ip = False
    try:
        s = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_DGRAM)
        s.connect(('google.com', 0))
        ip = s.getsockname()[0]
        s.close()
    except socket.error:
        return False
    else:
        return ip

def main():
    x = checknetwork()
    while x == False:
        print "Checking network ..."
        x = checknetwork()
        sleep(1)

This just tries to open a socket to some known address and fails until it can actually get a connection. Make it executable with:

chmod +x ip.py

You then need to add this to bootup by adding it to /etc/rc.local:

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.

/usr/bin/python /directory/where/you/put/ip.py

exit 0

Hope that helps

Comments

[jasonwryan]

How does this relate to the OP's question?