Passing keyboard shurtcuts from dom0 to AppVMs

[gerd...@googlemail.com]

I recently switched to Qubes OS R2 from Xubuntu and I'll feel comfortable already. The two things I am currently missing are Guake (drop down terminal on one key) and Synapse (fast app launcher / file finder). Both apps are activated with keyboard shortcuts. I'm running XFCE in dom0 and was thinking this could be done with 'keyboard shortcuts for application' in combination with xdotool in the AppVM. For example:

hitting F12 runs the command 'qvm-run -a <domain> "xdotool key F12"'
(which would open guake in <domain>)

This does work, but only once. After hitting F12 twice (open and close guake) running above command doesn't work anymore. So I have following questions:

1. Has anybody done this and has a good solution for this?

2. If not: any ideas why my approach only works once?

3. It seems that .bashrc gets sourced every time I use that shortcut (F12). Why is this?


Thanks in advance,
cheers,
jan

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

On Thu, Jan 08, 2015 at 06:34:05AM -0800, gerd...@googlemail.com wrote:
> I recently switched to Qubes OS R2 from Xubuntu and I'll feel comfortable already. The two things I am currently missing are Guake (drop down terminal on one key) and Synapse (fast app launcher / file finder). Both apps are activated with keyboard shortcuts. I'm running XFCE in dom0 and was thinking this could be done with 'keyboard shortcuts for application' in combination with xdotool in the AppVM. For example:
>
> hitting F12 runs the command 'qvm-run -a <domain> "xdotool key F12"'
> (which would open guake in <domain>)

This looks like a good approach.

> This does work, but only once. After hitting F12 twice (open and close guake) running above command doesn't work anymore. So I have following questions:
>
> 1. Has anybody done this and has a good solution for this?

Not me ;)

> 2. If not: any ideas why my approach only works once?

Check .xsession-errors in dom0 and the VM. Does that command work from
terminal multiple times, or also only once?

Some times ago I had problem with Xfce keyboard shortcuts
generally (some of them were not working at all), but after some update
it just works now.

> 3. It seems that .bashrc gets sourced every time I use that shortcut (F12). Why is this?

Because new shell is started for each such call.

--
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

[yon...@gmail.com]

On Thursday, January 8, 2015 at 10:34:05 PM UTC+8, gerd...@googlemail.com wrote:
> I recently switched to Qubes OS R2 from Xubuntu and I'll feel comfortable already. The two things I am currently missing are Guake (drop down terminal on one key) and Synapse (fast app launcher / file finder). Both apps are activated with keyboard shortcuts. I'm running XFCE in dom0 and was thinking this could be done with 'keyboard shortcuts for application' in combination with xdotool in the AppVM. For example:
>
> hitting F12 runs the command 'qvm-run -a <domain> "xdotool key F12"'
> (which would open guake in <domain>)
>

This is kinda old topic but I thought some people would find it useful -
I've done something similar with Yakuake. you can send the app command using dbus so I se t F12 to send the following command -
qvm-run -a <VM> 'dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.kde.yakuake /yakuake/window org.kde.yakuake.toggleWindowState'

This seems to be working with no major issues, now I only need to see if it`s possible to use background transparency