Ubuntu – Problem with setting wallpaper using gsettings

gnomegsettingswallpaper

I used gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri 'file://PathToImage' to set an image as a wallpaper as suggested in this answer. This does not do the job properly. For today's bing image, script here changes my background like this

Image of my desktop

This happens at random and sometimes it sets the wallpaper properly. Using GUI, setting the image as wallpaper by right-clicking on it works properly every time. Any possible causes of this problem?

Edit1: The download is perfectly fine. As I have mentioned, I can set the photo as wallpaper by right clicking the photo and chosing 'set as wallpaper' from the menu.

Best Answer

You mentioned

The download is perfectly fine. As I have mentioned, I can set the photo as wallpaper by right clicking the photo and chosing 'set as wallpaper' from the menu.

As you can manually set the wallpaper the problem may be on the cache, which is generated before the downloader completely write the data on the file. So regenerating the cache in this kind of case is necessary.

So delete wallpaper cache rm /home/$USER/.cache/wallpaper/* . Add this code to end of the script after some sleep.

Let's do a test

Find and open the image cache of current wallpaper from /home/$USER/.cache/wallpaper/
Edit the image ( such as rotate clockwise. You can do it with the default imageg viwer (GNOME image viewer) using Ctrl+R (Or from edit -> rotate))
Logout and login ubuntu (or restart)

That's it now you can see the changes on the desktop wallpaper (If you rotated the image, then the wallpaper will also get rotated)

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Setting cron to run a shell script: random wallpaper from a webpage

This is happen because cron uses only a very restricted set of environment variables. The only one environment variable that is responsible for running in the right way the script from the question when this is set as a cron job is DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS.

So, you must to export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS environment variable in your script. See more explanations in my answer here.

In the end, your script should look like:

#!/bin/bash

PID=$(pgrep gnome-session)
export DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=$(grep -z DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS /proc/$PID/environ|cut -d= -f2-)

countervar=1;
finish=0;
cd /home/guinness/.rwallpaper/
if [ -f counter ]
then
    countervar=`cat counter`
fi

for (( i=$countervar; c<=2000000; i++ ))
do
   echo $i > "counter"
   if [ ! -f wallpaper-$i.jpg ]
   then
    wget "http://wallpapers.wallbase.cc/rozne/wallpaper-$i.jpg"

    if [ -f wallpaper-$i.jpg ]
    then
        gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri "file:///home/guinness/.rwallpaper/wallpaper-$i.jpg"
        exit
    fi
   fi
done

Ubuntu – Setting Wallpaper in Gnome with command line only works once

Trying a little bit and reading about the bug I figured out a really simple workaround.

You will have to sandwitch your "picture-url" command disabling and enabling againg the draw-background entry. Basically, your line should look like this:

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background draw-background false && gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri file:///home/$USER/Imágenes/pic.jpg && gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background draw-background true

I've just made a one-liner that do gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background draw-background false change the wall and then activate the entry again. :)

It works like a charm! Thanks for the question! ^_^

Best Answer

Let's do a test

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Setting cron to run a shell script: random wallpaper from a webpage

Ubuntu – Setting Wallpaper in Gnome with command line only works once

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