HOWTO: Finally! How to easily change your desktop to a random file at specified times

[xeddog]

Niicodemus -

I tried your perl script on another Jaunty install (this one upgraded from Intrepid), and it works great. One question though. Can it 1) be modified to access images from multiple directories, and/or 2) be modified to include sub-directories?

And I still have the errors in my previous post for the original installation. I would still like to get that resolved too.

TIA,

xeddog

[hyperAura]

thnx a lot nice 1

i used the perl script works fine

[gnudoc]

Here's my fairly simple take on this. Since intrepid, gconftool has used DBUS, breaking the older scripts. This script works with both newer and older versions of Ubuntu.
It works with as many directories as you like, and handles recursion happily.
Although it's a fairly large file (nearly 3kb), that's mostly because of the heavy commenting.

Your thoughts?

[tpjk]

Here's my fairly simple take on this. Since intrepid, gconftool has used DBUS, breaking the older scripts. This script works with both newer and older versions of Ubuntu.
It works with as many directories as you like, and handles recursion happily.
Although it's a fairly large file (nearly 3kb), that's mostly because of the heavy commenting.

Your thoughts?

this script works really well for me - so thanks:]

the only weird thing i encountered was that i got the following error message when running the script from the shell:

touch: cannot touch `.../scripts/wallpaper/Xdbus_details': No such file or directory
chmod: cannot access `.../scripts/wallpaper/Xdbus_details': No such file or directory

i know it says in your comments that i need to change the path to the Xdbus_details file, but since i'm fairly new to scripting i couldn't make sense of what you meant by

source the file at $DETAILS in your cronjob
"*/10 * * * * . /path/to/Xdbus_details; /path/to/setwallpaper.sh" is the sort of thing you want

plus, i can't seem to find the Xdbus_details file anywhere in my file system.

other than that, thanks again for sharing the script!

[shawnhcorey]

I just installed 9.04 in anticipation of the Big Day and now crontab won't change my background.

• It worked fine in 8.04
• It works fine in a terminal
• It correctly changes ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/background/%gconf.xml

It just doesn't change the image.

Anybody got any ideas?

Update 2009.10.3: After some investigation, I discovered that the daemon to change the background, gconfd-2, does not realizes that the gconf files have changed. The result, no change in the image. Now to figure out what to do about it.

[major.stubble]

Update 2009.10.3: After some investigation, I discovered that the daemon to change the background, gconfd-2, does not realizes that the gconf files have changed. The result, no change in the image. Now to figure out what to do about it.

This is covered in Bug #285937.

There are suggestions provided in the bug, but I prefer this:

export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=${DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS:=$(grep "^DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=" ${HOME}/.dbus/session-bus/$(cat /var/lib/dbus/machine-id)-${DISPLAY##:[0-9].} )}

This will export the needed environment variable "DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" if it is not set or is null. I would not put this in your crontab. Instead, it should be in the code calling gconftool-2. It must be set prior to the line executing gconftool-2.

[Derek S]

Here's the script I use for changing wallpaper in gnome. It uses the shuf command, not arrays. I'm not sure if it is in all versions of Ubuntu, but it works in 9.10 Karmic

#!/bin/bash

# Script to randomly set Background from files in a directory

# Directory Containing Pictures
DIR="/home/username/Pictures/background"

# Command to Select a random jpg file from directory
# Delete the *.jpg to select any file but it may return a folder
PIC=$(ls $DIR/*.jpg | shuf -n1)

# Command to set Background Image
gconftool -t string -s /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename $PIC

I pieced it together from other posts solving different problems, and it works, but if it can be improved let me know.

[ashokiiit]

Hello, first of all good work but when i execute the command

sudo sh /bin/changewallpaper.sh

it is showing the following error.

/bin/changewallpaper.sh: 10: Syntax error: "(" unexpected

Can u help me in this....

[pt123]

have you tried my script?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...3&postcount=24

[ashokiiit]

hey tried the script...but now wall paper is not changing randomly i added following lines
crontab -e
*/1 * * * * changewallpaper.sh
@reboot changewallpaper.sh

any suggestions ??