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View Full Version : [ubuntu] peculiar problems with apps in launchers



akashiraffee
December 7th, 2009, 02:50 PM
I just installed ubuntu 9.10 last week and have added a few launchers for my favourite programs -- mc, which is a terminal app and so did not install on the menu, and notelist, a gtk app which does not have a ubuntu package so is built from source.

They both run fine when I was starting them from the command-line. When I added a panel launcher for mc tho*, something gets screwed up: mc uses F3 to view files with whatever $VIEWER is set to. This should be less (and "echo $VIEWER" shows as less in the terminal), but instead, it uses vim in readonly mode. F4 should edit a file with whatever $EDITOR is set to. Again, echo shows it correctly as vim. But F4 does nothing.

All this works properly if I just start a terminal and use the command-line. Does anyone know what the difference is?

Notelist lists an index of note files and calls another program, "note", to display them. It runs fine from the command line too, but when used with a launcher it disappears when you go to view a note. I compiled -g and changed the launcher to "Application in Terminal" with the command "gdb notelist"; run inside the debugger this way, tho, the problem does not occur, so I cannot find the fault.

*this is the same whether I use "gnome-terminal --e mc" or "Application in Terminal"

akashiraffee
December 7th, 2009, 04:59 PM
If you try running a shell script, either as "run in terminal" or using a command "gnome-terminal -e", you get a popup:

There was an error creating the child process for this terminal

[moment later]
Turns out the reason for that is the PATH is not set right, ie, the launcher is I think running as a different user.