How can I make a script that opens terminal windows and executes commands in them?

Question

I have three scripts I need to run when I start up my Ubuntu machine, they start services I use in my development environment.

To do that, I manually open three terminals and type in the commands.

Is there any way to create a script that will open three terminals and execute one command in each of these? (Each command should be in a separate terminal window so I can see their output).

Answer 1

gnome-terminal -e command

or

xterm -e command

or

konsole -e command

Pretty much

terminal -e command

To make the terminal stay when the command exits:

In konsole there is a --noclose flag.

In xterm, there is a -hold flag.

In gnome-terminal, go to Edit -> Profile Preferences -> Title. Click the Command tab. Select Hold the terminal from the drop-down menu labelled When command exits. You should create a new profile for that and execute with

gnome-terminal --window-with-profile=NAMEOFTHEPROFILE -e command

Answer 2

Instead of hard-coding gnome-terminal, konsole, et cetera, use the Alternatives system. The program that executes the default terminal emulator is:

x-terminal-emulator

On my system, it opens a new instance of Konsole every time I execute this command.

Luckily, the terminals seems to support the -e option for executing a command (I verified it for konsole and gnome-terminal). Arguments after the command are passed to the invoked command. Bash refuses to stay open in my terminal, an additional script is needed to get a terminal:

#!/bin/sh
"$@"
exec "$SHELL"

If you've saved the previous script as /home/user/hacky and made it executable, you would run your scripts with:

x-terminal-emulator -e /home/user/hacky your-script optional arguments here

The full path is required and /home/user/hacky has to be executable.

My previous attempt to run a script in a new terminal window can be found in revision #2, it was before I realised arguments can be passed to x-terminal-emulator.

Answer 3

Quite simply-

#!/bin/bash

/etc/init.d/ccpd status

This is enough for other commands that do not need to display anything in terminal. But here one has to see the status displayed.
So, it needs to run in a terminal window

#!/bin/bash

gnome-terminal -e "/etc/init.d/ccpd status"  --window-with-profile=NAMEOFTHEPROFILE

The other post intended [] to be a placeholder

Here "NAMEOFTHEPROFILE" is to be replaced with the name of the profile that "Holds the terminal when the command exits".

Answer 4

commenting for the answer by Lekensteyn. I know this is a old post, but for anyone who finds this useful (as I just did) Instead of making another "hacky script" with just put a function inside the script you are calling

hacky_function()
{
"$@"
exec "$SHELL"
}

Call your script with "x-terminal-emulator -e /path/to/script hacky_function optional arguments here"

Don't forget to put "$@" at the end of the script

Answer 5

Use the screen command and -d detach from an existing screen session, and reattach here -m force a new screen session -S create a named session instead of using the default name