I have gone a long way towards generating a Centos/Mate workstation with all of the files, users and programs we need in our development environment. However, I have not been able to find how to generate an icon in the Mate Panel from my bash script. I know it is easy to create an icon in the Mate panel from the gui but I want it all done from the bash script so that I can just distribute a single bootable usb stick to each of our developers in various States and they can just enter a few parameters such as workstation name, user account passwords and some local stuff at the beginning and about 40 minutes later they have a fully configured workstation, either updated from their existing one or a fresh workstation, without further intervention, including creating or preserving all ssh links. I have found out how to create an icon on the desktop by creating/modifying files in the right place but is there a similar method that enables me to generate the panel icons?
Bash Creation of Mate Panel icon
- Thread starter WarwickW
- Start date
As one of the resident bash ninjas, I would normally offer to help. But I’m not familiar with Mate.
If nobody answers in the next day or so, I’ll try installing Mate and will take a look for you.
I would imagine that it should just involve copying your .desktop file somewhere, or editing a config to add the path to your .desktop to allow it to be added to the panel.
If nobody answers in the next day or so, I’ll try installing Mate and will take a look for you.
I would imagine that it should just involve copying your .desktop file somewhere, or editing a config to add the path to your .desktop to allow it to be added to the panel.
Likely, you'll need to edit the Mate config files. I don't have a Mate system available ATM, so I can't get very specific on the details, but you can probably dig around in ~/.local and ~/.config and find something.
I've just tried installing mate and taken a look at how it's configured.
It seems that all configuration for mate is stored in a binary database that is managed via a program called dconf.
dconf is basically Gnomes equivalent to the Windows registry.
Trying to programmatically add an icon to the mate panel will almost certainly be possible, but it will not be pretty!
I have found out some things that might lead you towards working out which keys to add.
But I haven't worked out the commands in order to successfully add a .desktop launcher to the panel yet.
And unfortunately - I don't have time to look into this any further.
But to get you started - when logged into a mate session you could try the following:
1. Open a terminal and Run the command:
That will start watching the keys in /org/mate/panel and will log any changes in a file in your home directory called
2. Leaving the above command running, switch to the desktop and try adding an icon to the panel via the gui method.
3. Switch back to the terminal and kill the
Now you should have a file in your home directory called
Additionally:
- You can dump your current settings for mate-panel using the command:
That will dump all of dconf's 'registry' settings for mate-panel into a file in your home directory called
- There is a gui-based viewer/editor for dconf. Aptly called dconf-editor. Which is a bit like Windows registry editor.
Again - when it comes to setting the keys - I'm not sure exactly what dconf commands you will need to issue, or the order in which to issue them. Hopefully the above commands will help you to work that out. I wish I had more time to look into this. This is the kind of problem I like to solve.
If I get some more free-time, I might revisit this again and have a go at working out the final steps.
But if you do manage solve this before then, please post a reply here stating how you did it, because I'm sure it will be of great use to somebody else in the future!
Failing that - you might have to make do with putting the icon somewhere in the systems main menu.
You can achieve this by creating/adding a .desktop launcher file in the
It seems that all configuration for mate is stored in a binary database that is managed via a program called dconf.
dconf is basically Gnomes equivalent to the Windows registry.
Trying to programmatically add an icon to the mate panel will almost certainly be possible, but it will not be pretty!
I have found out some things that might lead you towards working out which keys to add.
But I haven't worked out the commands in order to successfully add a .desktop launcher to the panel yet.
And unfortunately - I don't have time to look into this any further.
But to get you started - when logged into a mate session you could try the following:
1. Open a terminal and Run the command:
dconf watch /org/mate/panel/ > ~/mate-panel-key-changesThat will start watching the keys in /org/mate/panel and will log any changes in a file in your home directory called
mate-panel-key-changes - but feel free to call it something else!2. Leaving the above command running, switch to the desktop and try adding an icon to the panel via the gui method.
3. Switch back to the terminal and kill the
dconf watch process by pressing the ctrl+c keybind.Now you should have a file in your home directory called
mate-panel-key-changes (or whatever you decided to call it in step 1) that lists the keys that were added/changed when you added your new icon.Additionally:
- You can dump your current settings for mate-panel using the command:
dconf dump /org/mate/panel/ ~/mate-panel-settingsThat will dump all of dconf's 'registry' settings for mate-panel into a file in your home directory called
mate-panel-settings. Again - feel free to change the name of the output file!- There is a gui-based viewer/editor for dconf. Aptly called dconf-editor. Which is a bit like Windows registry editor.
Again - when it comes to setting the keys - I'm not sure exactly what dconf commands you will need to issue, or the order in which to issue them. Hopefully the above commands will help you to work that out. I wish I had more time to look into this. This is the kind of problem I like to solve.
If I get some more free-time, I might revisit this again and have a go at working out the final steps.
But if you do manage solve this before then, please post a reply here stating how you did it, because I'm sure it will be of great use to somebody else in the future!
Failing that - you might have to make do with putting the icon somewhere in the systems main menu.
You can achieve this by creating/adding a .desktop launcher file in the
/usr/share/applications/ directory, or in each users ~/.local/share/applications/ directory.
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