Systemd and variety

Help
3

Not an ideal solution but a workaround.

Variety doesnt seem to return when calling set. So we must finish it manually instead, for example, using a timeout. The following script sets the wallpaper and then waits 10minutes before killing variety.

#! /usr/bin/env nix-shell
#! nix-shell -i bash -p bash
RANDOM_FILE=$(find "$BACKGROUNDS" -type f | shuf -n 1 | tr -d '\n')
variety --set="$RANDOM_FILE" &
sleep 10m
kill $!

After killing the script, you can let systemd restart it by passing restart=always, thus changing the wallpaper every time it dies:

systemd.user.services = {
    wallpaper-slideshow-random = {
      Unit = {
        Description = "Sets up the wallpaper slideshow randomly";
      };
      Install = {
        WantedBy = [ "default.target" ];
      };
      Service = {
        Type = "exec";
        ExecStart = "${pkgs.writeShellApplication 
          { name = "wallpaper-slideshow-random"; 
            # runtimeInputs = [pkgs.variety ]; 
            text = builtins.readFile ./scripts/random_wallpaper.sh;}
        }/bin/wallpaper-slideshow-random";
        Restart = "always";
        Environment = [
          "BACKGROUNDS=${config.home.sessionVariables.BACKGROUNDS}"
        ];
      };
    };
  };

There should be a way of killing and restarting from bash. But i found no success :frowning: (the timeout utility seems to kill the whole script).