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I am using awesome v3.4.15 (Never Gonna Give You Up) and (X)Ubuntu. My display manager is lightdm.

In /etc/xdg/awesome/rc.lua I've added this line to change my background to a solid color:

theme.wallpaper_cmd = { "hsetroot -solid '#000000'" }

However, my wallpaper is always set to the default blue wallpaper on a reboot - even after pressing Mod+Ctrl+r, which reloads the config file by restarting awesome.

When I execute hsetroot -solid '#000000' itself, it works like a charm. Reloading the config doesn't change anything, the background then stays the desired fixed color.

To reload my config, I've got the default command in my rc.lua:

awful.key({ modkey, "Control" }, "r", awesome.restart)

My greeting login screen, which has the same wallpaper as the default blue desktop, is specified in /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter-ubuntu.conf and contains a line saying where this wallpaper is stored:

[greeter]
background=/lib/plymouth/themes/xubuntu-logo/wallpaper.png
#background=#000000

I changed it from #000000 back to the default [...]/wallpaper.png, after I've found out that switching from my user to guest/other in the menu of the said greeter resulted in the wallpaper being switched to a black wallpaper - the one specified in /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter-ubuntu.conf.

This is weird, because why doesn't this happen, when I select my user name in the menu, but with all other accounts?

If I switch the background setting back to the default value [...]/wallpaper.png, then selecting guest/other accounts in the menu results in the wallpaper being shown. It has a minor difference, though, to the default blue wallpaper I am having trouble with getting rid off: It doesn't have the weird 6-dots logo, which can be seen here again. So it is just the raw picture, that is located at /lib/plymouth/themes/xubuntu-logo/wallpaper.png.

  1. Why doesn't my background change to black, when setting background=#000000 in /etc/lightdm/lightdm-gtk-greeter-ubuntu.conf?
  2. Where does this extra 6-dots logo come from?
  3. Why is my config not reloaded when pressing Mod+Ctrl+r, resulting in the wallpaper_cmd to be executed?
  4. Other than awesome.restart, how can I reload my awesome config to test it?

3 Answers 3

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I don't know the four questions I'm afraid.

Your problem is that the colour reverts on restart? And that running the command:

theme.wallpaper_cmd = { "hsetroot -solid '#000000'" }

sets it to black corectly.

Have you tried adding a .desktop file in /home/<USER>/.config/autostart?

Run these commands:

mkdir .config/autostart

(don't worry if it says mkdir: cannot create directory ‘autostart’: File exists. That means it was already there).

cd .config/autostart
touch background-setter.desktop
gedit background-setter.desktop

In the file should be the following:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Name=Background Setter
Comment=Set background
# the sleep and extra command is to ensure it runs, and then runs again incase there is another startup program that is breaking the settings.
Exec=theme.wallpaper_cmd = { "hsetroot -solid '#000000'" }; sleep 6; theme.wallpaper_cmd = { "hsetroot -solid '#000000'" }
Terminal=false
Type=Application
Categories=Application;

Then make it executable

chmod +x background-setter.desktop

It should launch on startup.

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You mention editing /etc/xdg/awesome/rc.lua. This is the global/default awesome config (which gets overwritten on updates btw). Your personal config at ~/.config/awesome/rc.lua gets used first. Edit this file and it should stick.

haven't got a clue about the rest.

0

I use exactly the same configuration as you (Awesome inside XFCE).

To resolve this issue, I think you need to remove at least the xfdesktop4 package. When I look at my config, I also removed the xubuntu-desktop package. I didn't remember if both removals are needed.

One or two of these packages override the awesome desktop configuration. I think this is surely why you think your configuration is not updated / reloaded.

Commands to remove the packages :

sudo apt-get remove xfdesktop4
sudo apt-get remove xubuntu-desktop

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