MATE-SESSION

Section: User Commands (1)
Updated: 11 February 2014
Page Index

NAME

mate-session - Start the MATE Desktop Environment.

SYNOPSIS

mate-session [OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION

The mate-session program starts up the MATE desktop environment. This command is typically executed by your Login/Display Manager (like GDM, LXDM, XDM, SLiM, or from your X startup scripts like .xinitrc). It will load either your saved session, or it will provide a default session for the user as defined by the system administrator (or the default MATE installation on your system).

The default session is defined in the dconf keys under /org/mate/desktop/session/
When saving a session, mate-session saves the currently running applications in the ~/.config/mate-session/saved-session directory of the users /home.

mate-session is an X11 session manager. It can manage MATE applications as well as any other X11 SM compliant ones.

OPTIONS

The following options are supported:

-a, --autostart=DIR: Start all applications defined in "DIR", instead of starting the applications defined in /org/mate/desktop/session/default-session
Multiple --autostart options can be passed.
-f, --failsafe: Run in fail-safe mode. User-specified applications will not be started.
--debug: Enable debugging code.
--display=DISPLAY: X display to use.
--version: Output version information and exit.
-?, -h, --help: Print standard command line options.
--help-all: Print all command line options.

ENVIRONMENT

mate-session sets several environment variables for the use of its child processes:

SESSION_MANAGER

: This variable is used by session-manager aware clients to contact mate-session.

DISPLAY

: This variable is set to the X display being used by mate-session. Note that if the --display option is used this might be different from the setting of the environment variable when mate-session is invoked.

FILES

~/.config/autostart
/usr/share/autostart
/usr/share/mate/autostart

: The applications defined in the above directories will be started on login. mate-session-properties(1) can be used to easily configure them.

~/.config/mate-session/saved-session

: This directory contains the list of applications of the saved session.

BUGS

Should you encounter any bugs, they may be reported at:

http://github.com/mate-desktop/mate-session-manager/issues

AUTHORS

This Manual page was originally written for gnome-session by:

Miguel de Icaza <miguel@helixcode.com> (2000)
Vincent Untz <vuntz@gnome.org> (2009-2010)

It has been updated for the MATE Desktop Environment by:

Adam Erdman <hekel@archlinux.info> (2014)