HOWTO: get a Fluxbox menu (and customization)

[TeaSwigger]

Hello mojoman, thanks for the great tip. I followed your suggestions and it works great. What I was doing before was:

 [exec] (Shutdown) {konsole -T "Shutdown" -e sudo shutdown now -h}

Of course I'm using fluxbox on KDE/Kubuntu and Gnome/ubuntu users would have to change it appropriately. What this does is make the terminal window pop up prompting for the password (if you've not entered it in the past 15mins; if you have it proceeds with shutdown without waiting to open a terminal window). Enter the pass and it shuts down. Just a suggestion for anyone not willing or inclined to edit sudoers.

[TeaSwigger]

Thanks again to you RedSquirrel. I've now fashioned a custom menu. One thing I've done is to separate the menus into separate files and include a submenu with a command to open the menu(s) and key user files like startup and backgrounds in mousepad for quick and easy editing. No rummaging into ~/.fluxbox etc

Now I have a couple of questions. You know those separators you can do with text, the [nop] ones? Is it possible to choose a color just for them? They don't stand out very legibly in some skins. Secondly but not leastly I installed feh for backgrounds and it works except for .bmps and largeish .pngs. It gives me this error:

fbsetbg: Something went wrong while setting the wallpaper.
Run 'wmsetbg -s -S ~/Pictures/wallpapers/drad/Chiana.png' from an xterm to find out what.

and doing so it sez:

could not find image file used in texture.

How can I fix this so I can use png & bmp files?

[TeaSwigger]

Didn't mean to do 3 posts in a row but I messed up trying to get the screenshot in the prior post. Here it is fwiw

[SadaraX]

Hello mojoman, thanks for the great tip. I followed your suggestions and it works great. What I was doing before was:

 [exec] (Shutdown) {konsole /sbin/shutdown -h now}

Of course I'm using fluxbox on KDE/Kubuntu and Gnome/ubuntu users would have to change it appropriately. What this does is make the terminal window pop up prompting for the password (if you've not entered it in the past 15mins; if you have it proceeds with shutdown without waiting to open a terminal window). Enter the pass and it shuts down. Just a suggestion for anyone not willing or inclined to edit sudoers.

You can get around the problem of passwords for shutdowns and restarts by modifying the /etc/sudoes files.

sudo nano /etc/sudoers # or whatever text editor you prefer instead of nano, like kate/emacs/gedit

Add the following line:

# Passwordless shutdown and reboot
my_user_name ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: /sbin/shutdown -h now, /sbin/reboot

Now user my_user_name can run 'sudo reboot' or 'sudo halt' without a password

You can modify your menu for the following options:

      [exec] (Log out)
      [exec] (Reboot) {sudo /sbin/reboot}
      [exec] (Shutdown) {sudo /sbin/shutdown -h now}

This will not require passwords and it will be immediate.

[TeaSwigger]

Yeah mojoman beat you to it on page 4 hehe... I was just posting a thanks and the other method for anyone not willing to modify the sudoers file and/or wanting a pass prompt first. But the thoughts appreciated

[mojoman]

Hello mojoman, thanks for the great tip. I followed your suggestions and it works great. What I was doing before was:

 [exec] (Shutdown) {konsole -T "Shutdown" -e sudo shutdown now -h}

Of course I'm using fluxbox on KDE/Kubuntu and Gnome/ubuntu users would have to change it appropriately. What this does is make the terminal window pop up prompting for the password (if you've not entered it in the past 15mins; if you have it proceeds with shutdown without waiting to open a terminal window). Enter the pass and it shuts down. Just a suggestion for anyone not willing or inclined to edit sudoers.

You're welcome. Glad it worked. I use this setup on both my desktop and an old laptop of mine and I'm prettty happy with it. I wasn't aware of the possibility of being promted for the password but that's a good solution if one doesn't want to edit the sudoers file.

/mojoman

[yabbadabbadont]

How can I fix this so I can use png & bmp files?

Install the eterm package since it includes the Esetroot utility. It is the first background setting program that fbsetbg looks for and can handle pretty much anything that you can throw at it.

[TeaSwigger]

Thanks yabbadabbadont, I installed eterm and it's all working. I've added a bunch of directories of walls to fluxbox submenus for easy browsing and desktop decorating pleasure. Do we use this "eterm" in ubuntu / fluxbox or are we only after the bg setter? And is it ok for me to go on and on here about fluxbox or is there another forum or anything I "should" be dropping into for fluxbox talk? Anyway I'm really enjoying trying fluxbox on both of my PCs now

[yabbadabbadont]

I've got a few too many wallpapers to include them in fluxbox submenus... (47,180 to be exact ) I use my own wallpaper randomizer scripts to rotate my wallpaper every five minutes. You can use Eterm as your terminal if you like. It has some nice "blingy" features, but the version in the repositories doesn't seem to include UTF-8 support. (I'm not even sure if it can support UTF-8 ) I just install it to get Esetroot. You'll need to ask RedSquirrel about "going on and on" about Fluxbox in this thread as he created it. I doubt that he will mind though.

[RedSquirrel]

Thanks again to you RedSquirrel.

My pleasure.

I've now fashioned a custom menu. One thing I've done is to separate the menus into separate files and include a submenu with a command to open the menu(s) and key user files like startup and backgrounds in mousepad for quick and easy editing. No rummaging into ~/.fluxbox etc

That's a good idea.

I spend a lot of time in the terminal, so for me to rummage around in ~/.fluxbox is not a big problem. I find myself typing the string "vim .fluxbox/..." quite often since there are always little adjustments to make.

Actually, I don't even use my menu that often since I have keyboard shortcuts setup for most of my applications.

You know those separators you can do with text, the [nop] ones? Is it possible to choose a color just for them? They don't stand out very legibly in some skins.

I don't think it's possible to change the color of individual elements in the menu. You can only change the "text color", which is the color that applies to all text, including the separators [separator] and [nop]. Just look in the theme's configuration file for:

menu.title.textColor:        <color>
menu.frame.textColor:        <color>
menu.hilite.textColor:        <color>

By the way, that's a nice menu you have there. I like your wallpaper too. Where did you get it?

Oh, and I don't mind you "going on and on" about Fluxbox here.