I3wm: Open terminal on startup on a specific workspace?

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
1

I want to add a line to my i3 config file that opens up the terminal on one specific workspace. The issue is I already predefined some workspaces, and assigned classes to them.

Here is the quick PASTEBIN of the relevant part of my config.

I want from i3 to run a terminal on my $workspace6 upon Login.
What I tried (just for the sake of testing):

exec --no-startup-id i3-msg 'workspace 7:mongod; exec i3-sensible-terminal'

What I got back:

  • A workspace “7:web” was created upon Login
  • A terminal was executed, but in $workspace1 because of the assign

Any ideas how to solve this? Thanks.

2

You could try to work around your problem with instances or titles on assignments. The first assignment seems to overrule the second one.

assign [class="Gnome-terminal" instance="<instance>" title="<title>"] $workspace7
assign [class="Gnome-terminal" ] $workspace1
2 Likes
3

Will try that out, thanks.
But what should I name the <instance> and <title> by?
Just random names? I’m guessing they have a use, I just don’t see where.

4

You can check the window instance with xprop. The first value of WM_CLASS(STRING) is the instance and the second is the class. Title is what ever is written on the window title. You don’t have to use both instance and title, I just put both of those options in the same example.

I am trying to think a clean way of setting instance or window title on gnome-terminal but haven’t come up with one. gnome-terminal should have the --name= and --class= parameters but they didn’t seem to work for me.

1 Like
5

Alright I will try to work it out. Thanks for the replies.
P.S. HERE is the only connected thing that I found, but I can’t make much sense out of it. Maybe it will help you.

6

I actually didn’t know it was that easy with urxvt. This should work:

exec --no-startup-id i3-msg 'workspace 7:mongod; exec urxvt -name mongod'

xprop should show this: WM_CLASS(STRING) = “mongod”, “URxvt”

assign [class="URxvt" instance="mongod"] $workspace7
assign [class="URxvt" ] $workspace1

You also could make urxvt open the program by adding -e parameter followed by command

exec --no-startup-id i3-msg 'workspace 7:mongod; exec urxvt -name mongod -e mongod'
1 Like
7

Alright, nice! Thanks for all the help! :smile:
The L1T community is really amazing.

8

I open a term on my 1st workspace upon login. I just used the workspace var in the i3-msg command.

.config/i3/config:

...
set $ws1  "1: "
...
set $monr "HDMI-1"
...
workspace $ws1  output $monr
...
exec --no-startup-id i3-msg 'workspace $ws1; exec termite'
...
1 Like