Bash script works in terminal emulator, but not as i3 keybind

Question

I have a lock screen script (via i3lock) that runs correctly in a terminal window, but not when used as a keybind in i3 config.

The script is pretty straightforward:

# Take screenshot
scrot /tmp/screenshot.png

# Pixelate and add central logo
magick /tmp/screenshot.png -scale 10% -scale 1000% -gravity center /home/user/bin/archlogo.png -composite /tmp/lock.png

# Lock using pixelated image & logo
i3lock -e -f -c 000000 -i /tmp/lock.png

The script is saved to ~/bin/lock and executable. The directory has also been identified in my ~/.bash_profile .

There is no error message, only brief flash of the terminal cursor.

The relevant lines in ~/.config/i3/config :

# lock screen
bindsym $mod+l exec lock

(the default keybind for $mod+l was deleted and i3 was restarted).

Answer 1

~/.bash_profile is a configuration file for bash and as such is only loaded when bash starts (as an interactive login shell or when it is expclicitly sourced by other bash configuration files, eg ~/.bashrc ). i3 itself does not load anything from ~/.bash_profile and neither does X.org . So unless you start your X session from a bash shell (for example with startx from the console) any changes to PATH will not have been loaded and i3 will not know about ~/bin being added to PATH .

If you want to modify PATH for i3 itself, then ~/.bash_profile is not the right place. Unfortunately for X sessions the "right place" very much depends on how you start it (eg from the console with start or with some desktop manager like lightdm or kdm ).

You could add a setting for PATH to ~/.pam_environment , which - at least on Arch - should prepend the given value to the system default setting of PATH . For example, if you put the follwing in your ~/.pam_environment

PATH=/home/soundscape/bin

and the default value is

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin

you will end up with

/home/soundscape/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin

Of course, this value might be further modified by any settings in ~/.bash_profile or similar files when you start bash .

Note: ~/.pam_environment does not support any parameter expansion, so adding something like

PATH=${PATH}:${HOME}/bin

will not work.

Answer 2

I remember something similar... try specifying the absolute path like this, might be that exec doesn't honor the $PATH environment variable:

# lock screen
bindsym $mod+l exec "${HOME}/bin/lock"