The problem you are facing is that when upstart
(or systemd
, or the scripts in /etc/rc.d/
) are run, there is normally no graphic service ("the X server") running.
Moreover, the availability of the graphic subsystem in Unix is strictly bond to the concept that a user has done a graphic login, and just this user has the right to use the graphic environment. It is customary NOT to start a graphic subsytem for root --- and the upstart scripts are run by root.
To automatically start a graphic application at the start of the system, my approach would be:
create a user for this purpose. Set it up so that its session will autostart.
set up a startup application for this user with the program you want; choose "startup application" in the dash:
for restarting the application when it exits/crashes, you can simply embed it in a script:
#!/bin/bash
#
while true; do
/full/path/to/start_myapp.sh # NO background (&)!
# if we land here it exited
sleep 5
done
If you use this script, it is really important that the command start_myapp.sh
should not launch the application in background. Otherwise, more complex strategies are required to auto-restart...
Notice that you can use your normal user in parallel too; just choose "switch user" from the panel (adapt to your flavor of Ubuntu) and you will have another graphical login screen; you can switch back-an-forth using CTRL-ALT-F7 and CTRL-ALT-F8...