ghimire

Random Themes (Frame Buffer Splash and SLiM)

January 7, 2010

One day randomness came to mind and I wrote a script to apply random framebuffer splash to terminal upon login. Gentoo comes with multiple themes in /etc/splash directory along with media-gfx/splash-themes-gentoo package. This is more or less general script and to prove that I’ve extended it to use with SLiM (Simple Login Manager) applying random themes from /usr/share/slim/themes/

###Script to Apply Random FB Splash from /etc/splash

### Generate random theme name from /etc/splash. Change path variable if you have a different theme location
THEME=$(MYPATH="/etc/splash/*"; 
        COUNT=$(( $(for i in ${MYPATH};do if [ -d ${i} ]; then echo $(basename ${i}); fi; done | wc -l) - 1)); 
        RAN=$(( $(expr $RANDOM % ${COUNT}) + 1)); 
        for i in ${MYPATH};do echo $(basename ${i}); done | sed -n ${RAN}p);
        
### Apply random theme to tty2
splash_manager -c set -t ${THEME} --tty=2

### Display info about theme applied
echo FBSplash Set to: ${THEME}

Explanation: The scripts makes use of $RANDOM shell variable and ‘sed’ way of displaying particular line to get a random theme from path variable and applies it to the terminal through splash_manager

###Script to Apply Random SLiM Themes from /usr/share/slim/themes
### Generate random theme name from /usr/share/slim/themes/. Change path variable if you have a different theme location THEME=$(MYPATH=”/usr/share/slim/themes/*”; COUNT=$(( $(for i in ${MYPATH};do echo $(basename ${i}); done | wc -l) - 1)); RAN=$(( $(expr $RANDOM % ${COUNT}) + 1)); for i in ${MYPATH};do echo $(basename ${i}); done | sed -n ${RAN}p);

### Replace current_theme line in /etc/slim.conf with random theme
sed -i 's/current_theme\(\s*.*\)/current_theme '${THEME}'/' /etc/slim.conf

### Display info about theme applied
echo SLiM Theme Set To: ${THEME}

Explanation: The scripts makes use of $RANDOM shell variable and ‘sed’ way of displaying particular line to get a random theme from path variable and replaces current_theme line in /etc/slim.conf. SLiM will read the line and apply theme upon displaying the login manager

Note: On gentoo commands specified in /etc/conf.d/local.start are run during startup which is a good location to call the above scripts. On debian it’s /etc/rc.local

♡2018 by ghimire. Copying is an act of love. Please copy.

Discussion