• From: Lincoln, UK
  • Registered: 2008-11-20
  • Posts: 4,430

Topic: Using Nautilus under Openbox

I know Nautilus is probably not the best file manager to use with Openbox, still I figured someone may actually find this useful. Also, sometimes you might need to install Nautilus to accomplish a certain task.

Anyhow, the problem with trying to use Nautilus under Openbox is that it will attempt a hostile takeover of your desktop when it is launched. When it does this, it disables Openbox's right-click menu and also overwrites any desktop wallpapers which have been set using Nitrogen/feh etc.

The solution to this is to place the following gconf commands in your Openbox autostart file, located at ~/.config/openbox/autostart.sh

# Disable Nautilus desktop.
gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false &
# Do not let Nautilus set the background image.
gconftool-2 -s -t bool /desktop/gnome/background/draw_background false &

I would consider the above two commands essential. The following are less essential, they are just tweaks I like to apply on my own systems:

# Make Nautilus use spatial mode, should start-up quicker.
gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser false &
# Make Nautilus show the advanced permissions dialog 
gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_advanced_permissions true &

Also, it should probably be stated that you could run these commands through the terminal and they should be persistent through Openbox sessions. However, if you run numerous desktop environments, GNOME, KDE etc. it would make more sense to apply the commands at the beginning of your Openbox session, regardless.

Anyway, I hope someone finds these useful smile

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  • omns
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Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

Ah excellent. I had to fire up nautilus yesterday for some reason and noticed the desktop takeover. Thanks for this smile

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  • fabsh
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Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

There is also nautilus --nodesktop (if I remember correctly) to prevent it from taking over your desktop

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  • omns
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Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

The command is nautilus --no-desktop

This is a handy command if you want to run nautilus as root (not that I can see much need) because the autostart settings aren't used by root.

In this case it would be sudo nautilus --no-desktop in a terminal

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  • fabsh
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Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

OK, close.... wink big_smile

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  • From: Lincoln, UK
  • Registered: 2008-11-20
  • Posts: 4,430

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

The only problem I can foresee with using the --no-desktop argument is that Nautilus is not only called/invoked by the user. Often it is started by another application, in which case it would perform its hostile takeover of the desktop as I would imagine the argument would be omitted. I think I will be sticking with my gconf commands big_smile

Also, you were both close, but neither of you are getting your hands on my cigars. omns was closest, but gksudo should really be used when calling graphical apps tongue big_smile

More information on the sudo vs gksudo issue here: http://myrtti.fi/blog/2008/11/11/using- … ad-mmmkay/

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  • omns
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Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

corenominal wrote:

Also, you were both close, but neither of you are getting your hands on my cigars. omns was closest, but gksudo should really be used when calling graphical apps tongue big_smile

hehe, I was going to come back and change that. You beat me to it smile

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  • omns
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Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

corenominal wrote:

I would consider the above two commands essential. The following are less essential, they are just tweaks I Also, it should probably be stated that you could run these commands through the terminal and they should be persistent through Openbox sessions. However, if you run numerous desktop environments, GNOME, KDE etc. it would make more sense to apply the commands at the beginning of your Openbox session, regardless.

Just a follow up. I have a box that I run a Linux Mint like Gnome setup on top of CrunchBang. It works well but that's another story.

Anyway I found that these commands remain persistent through all sessions and effect gnome sessions as well. This was even after removing them from autostart.sh, restarting openbox and then logging into gnome. It still persisted after reboot as well.

I ended up having to run the reverse commands in a terminal to get things back to normal.

gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop true &

gconftool-2 -s -t bool /desktop/gnome/background/draw_background true &

I guess this isn't a problem if you never intend to run gnome as well.

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  • From: Lincoln, UK
  • Registered: 2008-11-20
  • Posts: 4,430

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

omns wrote:

I guess this isn't a problem if you never intend to run gnome as well.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that the general idea is to run the reverse commands when starting a GNOME session. Thanks for highlighting this smile

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  • omns
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Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

I've since tested adding these reverse commands to the sessions manager in Gnome and it works well allowing you to chop and change between gnome and openbox and maintain proper control over the desktop in both environments.

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  • From: Lancashire, UK
  • Registered: 2008-12-02
  • Posts: 41

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

Blimey, thanks for that, confused the crap out of me!

  • From: Arkansas US
  • Registered: 2008-11-27
  • Posts: 190

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

I'm using nautilus to gui ssh to my server on my CrunchBang boxes and fillezilla on wife's window box. I've followed this thread on killing nautilus desktop, (which works great). My question is, why is my nautilus is not saving ssh bookmark after reboot? My wife & niece run both Mint & Ubuntu, their bookmarks are saved on reboot. Is there any script that I can add to saved this bookmark?
Bob

Last edited by NWAdawg (2008-12-19 11:33:47)

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  • Registered: 2009-01-06
  • Posts: 30

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

I might be the only person who likes nautilus, i use it a little differently.

In the rc.xml I change the mouse bind buttons:

<mousebind button="Middle" action="Press">
        <action name="ShowMenu">
          <menu>root-menu</menu>
        </action>
      </mousebind>

So i can access the root menu with middle click and free up the right click for nautilus.

And of course in menu.xml:

<menu id="client-list-combined-menu" plugin="client-list-combined-menu"/>

So i still get to see the window list.

There are a few pipe menus i uses as well such as the connected servers, bookmarks and Places menus from openbox.

They are all here:

http://icculus.org/openbox/index.php/Openbox:Pipemenus

----

I should add! using dropbox with openbox is quite easy even though i do like nautilus it can be slow so if i use, say, thunar, i will install dropbox like this:

http://wiki.getdropbox.com/TipsAndTrick … nuxInstall

and then 

ln /usr/bin/Thunar ~/bin/nautilus

then i can use the systray icon (if i want) it is not classy i admit.

Last edited by david (2009-01-07 22:46:57)

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  • From: Lost River Lake
  • Registered: 2009-02-19
  • Posts: 516

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

Thank you so much, this solved more than one problem. I'm not using Nautilus on my desktop machine's #! install but I also have Openbox on the side of the "regular" Gnome Ubuntu on my laptop; see one of my threads at Ubuntu Forums. And screenshots too.

Last edited by Piraja (2009-03-01 13:49:23)

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  • From: Baltimore, MD
  • Registered: 2008-11-30
  • Posts: 53

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

I've modified my autostart.sh but when I start nautilus from the terminal, it opens a pcman window.  Any idea what I need to change to fix this?

Edit:  I figured out that there is a script /usr/crunchbang/bin/nautilus that runs pcman if it exists and nautilus otherwise.  I'll just call the binary directly instead.

It does seem to have a problem in that after I uninstalled pcman, it hangs without doing anything.

Last edited by kozimodo (2009-03-04 02:03:31)

  • Registered: 2009-03-26
  • Posts: 38

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

Can you not move /usr/bin/crunchbang/nautilus see what happens, I have the same problem here sad

  • From: Baltimore, MD
  • Registered: 2008-11-30
  • Posts: 53

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

You can delete or rename it /usr/bin/crunchbang/nautilus.  I've changed the menu entry to directly call /usr/bin/nautilus.

  • Registered: 2009-03-26
  • Posts: 38

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

that will work too.... key change as well for super+f smile

  • Registered: 2009-04-13
  • Posts: 5

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

Thanks for the tips.  I did what corenominal suggested and I also made nautilus the default file manager in openbox.  Preferences | openbox config | gui menu editor - and you can add openbox menus.

Thanks!

  • Registered: 2009-05-28
  • Posts: 244

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

Is nautilus the only filemanager that does "arrange manually" mode?

On my desktop, and in certain folders, I like to arrange icons manually, and with the little image thumbnails (or document, webpage, or manually-set-folder-thumbnails) right up next to each other, forming kind of "collage" groups.  Eg I have a "nice designs" folder, where I have a group of screenshots/wallpapers etc, all in a "pile" of icons stuck right up against each other, then a separate group of interesting architectual designs, and so on.  I could put each group in subfolders, but then I don't know of any filemanagers that let you view an "ls -R", so you can view everything all at once in a single panel.

I'm loath to install nautilus, unless it's fairly light - does it bring a whole bunch of other stuff with it?

  • Registered: 2009-04-08
  • Posts: 7

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

I've followed these instructions and now I've got nautilus on #!, which is nice as it can natively browser networks...

However, I like to set in my preferences/behavior the option "always open in browser window" to true... When I do, it's ok for the session but it seems to reset when I reboot the computer. Is there any way to keep this option true?

  • From: Lincoln, UK
  • Registered: 2008-11-20
  • Posts: 4,430

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

udutronik wrote:

However, I like to set in my preferences/behavior the option "always open in browser window" to true... When I do, it's ok for the session but it seems to reset when I reboot the computer. Is there any way to keep this option true?

Did you add this line to your autostart.sh file?

gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser false &

If so, you could change it to:

gconftool-2 -s -t bool /apps/nautilus/preferences/always_use_browser true &

Hopefully that should solve your issue. smile

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  • Registered: 2009-04-08
  • Posts: 7

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

Issue was solved, thanks!

  • Registered: 2009-10-04
  • Posts: 20

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

Hi, I am very new to crunchbang, installed it just today and I really like it.... especially the speed!!
Now I also like Nautilus - although I know that's against the philosophy of #!

Anyway I did the changes you mentioned in the autstart.sh. But when I then reboot and start Nautilus it gives a...... let's say "very minimal nautilus". Please see the screenshot:
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/47/2009100412546880281280x.th.png
Any idea how I can get the normal Nautilus screen without letting it control all my desktop and stuff??

Thanks!!

  • From: Lincoln, UK
  • Registered: 2008-11-20
  • Posts: 4,430

Re: Using Nautilus under Openbox

Mufasa wrote:

Hi, I am very new to crunchbang, installed it just today and I really like it.... especially the speed!!
Now I also like Nautilus - although I know that's against the philosophy of #!

Anyway I did the changes you mentioned in the autstart.sh. But when I then reboot and start Nautilus it gives a...... let's say "very minimal nautilus". Please see the screenshot:
http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/47/2009100412546880281280x.th.png
Any idea how I can get the normal Nautilus screen without letting it control all my desktop and stuff??

Thanks!!

Please see: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/post/36164/#p36164

Hope it helps. smile

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