Randroot was written one evening because I happen to have a lot of cool images that I like, but I hate manually setting whichever one to my root window. So...I wrote a program that was primarily derived from a collection of functions I keep around.
It's not any great leaping steps in technology...it's actually pretty hum-drum, but it gets the job done fairly well.
If you have any suggestions for it, please send them to: spowers@ncsa.uiuc.edu
Building Randroot should be a piece of cake. There isn't much to it. The only problems you might have are the random and password functions. If you have trouble and need to change something, please send me your changes so I can incorporate them!
Installing Randroot is a piece of cake. You can't miss.
Configuring Randroot should be fairly straightforward, but you have to follow the directions expressly. If there is anything wrong in the rc file, Randroot will let you know upon startup.
Randroot 1.1: Random Root Image Chooser Scott Powers (spowers@ncsa.uiuc.edu) Brandon Long (blong@uiuc.edu) Usage: randroot [-vkq] [-r rcfilename] [-p pidfilename] -v : Echo version and usage information -k : Kill currently running randroot -q : Quit after displaying one image -r rcfilename : Specify alternate Configuration File -p pidfilename : Specify alternate PID File
Don't worry, its not that complicated. You can use randroot in most situations by doing nothing more than typing randroot. The other functions are for more advanced usage, such as if your system administrator installs it to run during the login screen for X.
One possible way to use randroot (to keep from having to kill off and start up a new randroot to get a background.):
Another possibility is to have randroot run while no one is logged in, and then kill it to let your users do whatever they want for a background image.
randroot -r /usr/openwin/lib/xdm/randrootrc -p /tmp/randroot.pid
kill `cat /tmp/randroot.pid`
works fine, or
else
randroot -r /usr/openwin/lib/xdm/randrootrc -p /tmp/randroot.pid -k
will change the image one last time.)