I want to run a shell script ~/.local/bin/test.sh via dmenu. If I run dmenu via $mod+D and browse for the entry test.sh I couldn't find it.
The path ~/.local/bin is already set to my $PATH variable in ~/.profile
$ echo $PATH
/home/ubuntu/bin:/home/ubuntu/.local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games
I also removed ~/.cache/dmenu_run and restart i3. What can I do to launch the test script via dmenu?
Delete ~/.cache/dmenu_run or ~/dmenu_cache, depending on which you have, and log back in. After your PATH is reloaded from .profile after logging in, dmenu should regenerate the cache from $PATH. dmenu seems to be bad about renewing its own cache, and needs to be forced to do it sometimes.
Also check that you have enabled the executable bit for script:
$ ls -l ~/.local/bin/test.sh
-rwxrwxrwx 1 user group 152 Jan 11 04:09 /home/user/.local/bin/test.sh
~/.cache/dmenu_run and restart the i3 but it doesn't affects the behavior of dmenu.
Commented
Jan 7, 2017 at 13:58
~/.profile
Commented
Jan 7, 2017 at 18:12
~/.cache/dmenu-recent directory.
Commented
Nov 4, 2020 at 23:36
I post the full algorithm:
~/.profile or ~/.xprofile (Create if doesn't exist), not in ~/.bashrcrm -f ~/.cache/dmenu_runTo debug env vars type:
echo $PATH > /tmp/pathcat /tmp/path
.bash_profile was not sufficient, so I just symlinked it to .profile and re-logged.
Commented
Jul 30 at 9:22
I had the same problem.
This Arch Linux forum post describes the problem:
Setting $PATH in ~/.bashrc doesn't ensure your WM/dmenu will inherit this env.
A more relevant question to ask is, "How do you login?" Usually the env exported in ~/.bash_profile or ~/.profile are available in your X applications.
Launch dmenu_run as you normally do, then in dmenu, type
echo $PATH > /tmp/path
Then in a terminal,cat /tmp/pathto see what that $PATH is.
In my case, $PATH directories set in my ~/.profile weren't picked up by dmenu. My window manager is started from .xinitrc, and adding an additional export PATH=$PATH:/dir/of/interest in the .xinitrc file before the exec my_wm line fixed the problem. It is a bit clunky though.
As noted previously, I had to remove the ~/.cache/dmenu_run file and log in again after making the change to get it to work.
echo $SHELL > /tmp/shell could also be worth it. I thought mine was using bash but it turns out it used zsh so it checked different config files. Also tried putting it in xinitrc and i3 config but neither of those worked - but /etc/zprofile did! The local ~/.zshrc was not enough. /etc/profile may work as well in both zsh and bash.
~/.profile file. I update my $PATH before sway is launched
Not the best way to fix this, but the only one that worked for me
In ~/.config/i3/config replace
bindsym $mod+d exec --no-startup-id dmenu_run
with
bindsym $mod+d exec --no-startup-id "export PATH=~/.local/bin:$PATH; dmenu_run"
After rm ~/.cache/dmenu_run && i3-msg reload binaries from ~/.local/bin accessible from dmenu
