F96_2: how does 'run Internet apps as spot' setting work?

[mow9902]

Hi All,
When I use the menu option Setup > QuickSetup and then tick the box "Run Internet apps as spot" I cannot see any apps to actually select. Is this how it is meant to be? In F95 I was given a list of apps to select. What am I doing wrong?

runasspot

runasspot.png (29.74 KiB) Viewed 898 times

[rockedge]

I tested with QuickSetup and checked run apps as spot which gave me the options ->

Screenshot(3).jpg (32.13 KiB) Viewed 876 times

[mow9902]

..strange - I get no app shown at all. Is this stored in a file somewhere; or does it read some folder structure (which I might have changed)?

[OscarTalks]

Hello mow,

I have a frugal of the latest F96_2 with no save (set up on a different machine from the one I am using now) and when I open Login and Security Manager it is the same as yours. It does not not offer me anything to tick to run-as-spot.

I believe that in this version, there is no palemoon any more and that has been replaced with Mike Walsh's portable firefox-esr, so maybe that does not offer the option to run-as-spot ??
In which case maybe you have nothing on-board which can be run-as-spot, unless you install something else?

[rockedge]

@mow9902 In my case both Opera and Palemoon are portables and are stored in /mnt/home.

Both Opera and Palemoon have their respective LAUNCH'er sysmlink'ed to /usr/bin and a .desktop file that points to the symlink.

[MochiMoppel]

I believe that in this version, there is no palemoon any more and that has been replaced with Mike Walsh's portable firefox-esr, so maybe that does not offer the option to run-as-spot ??
In which case maybe you have nothing on-board which can be run-as-spot, unless you install something else?

I think it's simply a case of misconfiguration. I checked the loginmanager script and found

Code: Select all

#130723 pre-populate .spot-status... 130822 add firefox...
for ONEAPP in seamonkey QtWeb opera firefox palemoon midori slimjet light netsurf iron min chromium google-chrome
do
	[ "$(which ${ONEAPP})" = "" ] && continue
	[ "$(grep "${ONEAPP}" /root/.spot-status)" = "" ] && echo "${ONEAPP}=false" >> /root/.spot-status
done

The script tries to find firefox, however in F96_2 the symlink to /opt/FirefoxESR-portable64/LAUNCH is named firefox_esr.
@rockedge should either adapt he loginmanager script or - better - rename the symlink /usr/bin/firefox_esr to /usr/bin/firefox

I haven't tried if this solves the problem. Just my guess ...

@mikewalsh You are our browser master. The list in the code is 10 years old and I miss some popular browsers, e.g. brave and vivaldi. I suspect that these newer browser share the fate of firefox_esr and are ignored by the "Login and Security Manager" dialog. Any other popular browser missing?

[mow9902]

Thanks MochiMoppel

I concur. Since you explained how it worked I played around and confirm that if you add the potential browser names into the loginmanager script eg
seamonkey QtWeb opera firefox palemoon midori slimjet light netsurf iron min chromium google-chrome vivaldi

..and then - for each application you want to run-as-spot: (let's say vivaldi)
(a) create a desktop file in /usr/share/applications/vivaldi.desktop
(b) symlink the desktop file into /usr/bin and make sure name ie /usr/bin/vivaldi

The entry will then show up in the loginmanager when it is next run.

[mow9902]

When somebody does look at updating the loginmanager script, could you please execute in the terminal to see if there are any errors.

If I first run the script to check firefox to run as spot - it produces this error
Same if I then run the script again to uncheck firefox to run as spot

Can anyone else confirm this?

loginmanager error.png (33.06 KiB) Viewed 624 times

[mow9902]

Thanks MochiMoppel

I concur. Since you explained how it worked I played around and confirm that if you add the potential browser names into the loginmanager script eg
seamonkey QtWeb opera firefox palemoon midori slimjet light netsurf iron min chromium google-chrome vivaldi

..and then - for each application you want to run-as-spot: (let's say vivaldi)
(a) create a desktop file in /usr/share/applications/vivaldi.desktop
(b) symlink the desktop file into /usr/bin and make sure name ie /usr/bin/vivaldi

The entry will then show up in the loginmanager when it is next run.

...an update on the note above. After further playing around I can see that:
(a) IF you want the item to appear in the puppy menu structure - then create a desktop file in /usr/share/applications/vivaldi.desktop ; but this is not needed for a program to run-as-spot.

(b) IF you want the program to run-as-spot then symlink the program executable into /usr/bin and make sure the name matches one of the names in the hard coded list in the loginmanager script eg /usr/bin/vivaldi
[Note: you link the executable - not the .desktop file itself)

When you run the loginmanager script:

• it will look for a defined list of executable programs in your search path. At the moment this is hardcoded in the loginmanager and includes those noted earlier. You can add others manually if you wish.

• when you 'check' a program to be run-as-spot, it will create a new entry in the same directory specified in (b) named vivaldi.bin (for example).; and this is the program which actually gets executed to run-as-spot

-If your executable program is named 'palemoon' then it will create 'palemoon.bin' in the same folder
-If your executable program is named 'chrome' then it will create 'chrome.bin' in the same folder
-If your executable program is named 'ironbrowser' then it will create 'ironbrowser.bin' in the same folder
etc

[MochiMoppel]

...an update on the note above. After further playing around I can see that:
(a) IF you want the item to appear in the puppy menu structure - then create a desktop file in /usr/share/applications/vivaldi.desktop ; but this is not needed for a program to run-as-spot.

Well, this is not a surprise. The loginmanager script only makes a wild guess and relies on a handful of browser names that came to the mind of the script author at the time the script was created. This is a VERY crude (and unreliable) way to create the list. Maybe it would be better to get the names from all .desktop files of the "Internet" menu category. This way not only would the browser file names be correct but it could also include other Internet applications that the user might want to run as spot.

when you 'check' a program to be run-as-spot, it will create a new entry in the same directory specified in (b) named vivaldi.bin (for example).; and this is the program which actually gets executed to run-as-spot

This procedure can cause serious confusion and may not even work, as I learned yesterday. Yesterday I tested the dialog wiith "opera", which is in my PATH, just to see if the dialog presents "opera" to run as spot. It did and and I stupidly ticked the checkbox. My Opera is Opera12 and it resides outside of Puppy. What happened next is that the script renamed "/mnt/home/operadir/opera" to "/mnt/home/operadir/opera.bin" and replaced the original opera with a wrapper script that prepares the now renamed opera.bin to run as spot. Too bad that the original opera is not a binary but it's also a script that sets some environment variables and then runs the binary "/mnt/home/operadir//lib/opera/opera". This binary tries to create some folders and the profile in its installation directory, but it now fails to run since it just lost the permission to write to any other directory than /home/spot . And since the renaming made by the loginmanager script is made to a file outside of Puppy this change is permanent, i.e. I was unable to run opera, normally or as spot, even after a reboot. Changed now opera.bin back to opera and everything is fine.

@rockedge Did you actually try to run your portable browsers as spot? I doubt that this would work since the idea behind @mikewalsh 's portables is that you create the browser profile in the browser's installation directory, preferably outside the main SFS, which is not (write)accessible to a spot user.