GNOME session save and restore

9 thoughts on “GNOME session save and restore”

1. From my tests, and from the dependencies of this script, can you confirm that it does not work with the wayland version of gnome?

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   1. Probably. I only test on Xorg.

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2. Hello
   tnx for such a useful little piece of code 🙂
   I think Ive found a bug
   Have a look at the following session.ini:

   ‘0x04001477’ => {
   ‘workspace’ => ‘2’,
   ‘comm’ => ‘eog’,
   ‘pid’ => ‘6776’,
   ‘geometry’ => ‘10,95,53,833,1119’,
   ‘command’ => ‘eog/home/user/Desktop/BtKTaUsUN1g.jpg’,
   ‘exec’ => [
   ‘eog’,
   ‘/home/user/Desktop/BtKTaUsUN1g.jpg’
   ],
   ‘state’ => {
   ‘_NET_WM_STATE_FOCUSED’ => 1
   },
   ‘Name’ => ‘Eog’,
   ‘class’ => ‘eog.Eog’,
   ‘id’ => ‘0x04001477’,
   ‘name’ => ‘fedora mtlW6U9e1yY.jpg’
   },
   ‘0x04000007’ => {
   ‘state’ => {},
   ‘Name’ => ‘Eog’,
   ‘id’ => ‘0x04000007’,
   ‘name’ => ‘fedora BtKTaUsUN1g.jpg’,
   ‘class’ => ‘eog.Eog’,
   ‘command’ => ‘eog/home/user/Desktop/BtKTaUsUN1g.jpg’,
   ‘exec’ => [
   ‘eog’,
   ‘/home/user/Desktop/BtKTaUsUN1g.jpg’
   ],
   ‘comm’ => ‘eog’,
   ‘workspace’ => ‘2’,
   ‘pid’ => ‘6776’,
   ‘geometry’ => ‘10,882,42,1035,1158’
   },

   ‘exec’ and ‘command’ of the first application are wrong (they are the same as in the second application)

   Cheers

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   1. Glad you find it useful.
      This behaviour is common for applications that manage their own windows internally, and is not unique to eog. Unfortunately, this also means that multiple windows of such applications cannot be restored by this script.

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3. Hello

   “session restore missing” goes into an almost endless loop (40mins)

   DEBUG: Trying 0x02e00007 + 0x04000007…
   DEBUG: Trying 0x05200007 + 0x03000007…
   DEBUG: Trying 0x03a00007 + 0x03c00007…
   DEBUG: Trying 0x05a00007 + 0x05e00007…
   DEBUG: Trying 0x05400007 + 0x08000007…
   DEBUG: Trying 0x05800007 + 0x06200007…
   DEBUG: Result = 15
   DEBUG: Result = 11 + 15 (best) = 26
   DEBUG: Trying 0x05400007 + 0x06200007…

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   1. Interesting. It looks like you have many windows open of a single application (maybe 12), and the script does not scale well. Let me see what I can do about it.

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      1. correct. I have usually 25-30 gedit, 40-50 eog, 14 firefox windows, 20-25 terminals. Over 10 virtual desktops. But Im still migrating from my old MacOS setup and will need to double that amount …

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4. GNOME has moved from Xorg to Wayland, and it looks like scripted inspection/control of windows is not possible in Wayland (ie, no wmctrl, xdotool, xwininfo, or xprop equivalents). Such functionality should be implemented by the compositor instead (ie, GNOME rather than Wayland), but has not been to my knowledge. Thus, unless/until then, I do not expect to do any more work on this script.

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5. Hello,
   Thanks a lot for this advanced (at least for me) Perl script for saving/restoring Gnome sessions!
   Please find below a patch adding a “session restore dumb” option which allows me to restore multiple Terminal windows (in different workspaces) in a short time on on multi-CPU laptop with Fedora 39 🙂
   KR,
   Thierry

   diff -u session.orig session
   — session.orig 2024-04-06 13:19:02.183048070 +0200
   +++ session 2024-04-06 17:27:13.880082034 +0200
   @@ -1,7 +1,8 @@
   #!/bin/env perl
   #
   # >session save
   -# >session restore [existing|matching|missing]
   +# *** ADDED: dumb mode ***
   +# >session restore [existing|matching|missing|dumb]
   # >session –session=session-name save
   # >session –session ~/.config/gnome-session/session.ini restore
   #
   @@ -111,7 +112,8 @@
   close ( $SES );

   print “Restoring session.\n”;
   – my $level = { existing => 0, matching => 1, missing => 2 }->{shift()} // 1;
   + # *** ADDED dumb mode ***
   + my $level = { existing => 0, matching => 1, missing => 2, dumb => 3 }->{shift()} // 1;

   eval ( $session );

   @@ -179,7 +181,8 @@
   print “DEBUG: Group $comm (”
   . ( keys ( %{$score{$comm}} ) +0 ) . ” windows)…\n”
   if $opt{debug} > 2;
   – my ( $score, $map ) = depth_first_search ( $score{$comm} );
   + # *** ADDED dumb mode -> skip search ***
   + my ( $score, $map ) = ( $level == 3 ) ? ( @_ ) : depth_first_search ( $score{$comm} );
   print “DEBUG: Best match score = $score\n” if $opt{debug} > 2;

   # This is basically a travelling salesman problem, solved using a
   @@ -271,7 +274,9 @@
   next if ! $session->{id} or $session->{cid} or
   $session->{_cid} or $session->{pid};
   # Only launch once per self_managed application:
   – next if grep { /^\Q$session->{class}\E/ }
   + # *** ADDED dumb mode allows multiple windows of the same kind ***
   + next if ( $level {class}\E/ }
   ( @{$exceptions{self_managed}} ) and
   $stat{self_managed}{$session->{class}}++;
   # Only launch once per pid_group (old pid) per round:
   @@ -326,6 +331,8 @@
   $stat{pid}{$session->{pid_group}} = 0; # Permit another instance
   $stat{wait} = $session->{wait} = 0; # Retry matching process
   $stat{exec}++; # after a waiting period
   + # *** ADDED dumb mode: get current ID of latest window ***
   + $session->{_cid} = wmctrl_latest_window_id() if $level > 2;
   }
   else
   {
   @@ -338,8 +345,11 @@
   if ( $stat{exec} )
   {
   # Calculate a load-adjusted wait time:
   – my $load = `cut -d” ” -f1 /proc/loadavg`+0;
   – my $wait = int(3**$load);
   + # *** ADDED divide by #CPUs ***
   + my $cpus = `lscpu | grep “^CPU(s):” | sed -e ‘s/^.*: *//’`;
   + my $load = (`cut -d” ” -f1 /proc/loadavg`+0)/$cpus;
   + # *** ADDED dumb mode shorter wait ***
   + my $wait = $level 10;

   print “DEBUG: Waiting $wait seconds (load=$load)…\n”
   @@ -363,6 +373,15 @@
   ( values ( %$session ) ) )
   {
   $session->{cid} //= $session->{_cid};
   + # *** ADDED debug of session hash values
   + if ( $opt{debug} > 2 )
   + {
   + print “Session data:”;
   + foreach my $key (keys %$session)
   + {
   + print “key is : $key, value is : $$session{$key}\n”;
   + }
   + }
   next if ! $session->{cid};
   my $current = $windows->{$session->{cid}};

   @@ -459,7 +478,8 @@
   else
   {
   die ( “Usage: session save\n”
   – . ” session restore existing|matching|missing\n” );
   + # *** ADDED dumb mode ***
   + . ” session restore existing|matching|missing|dumb\n” );
   }

   # Get current window list from wmctrl
   @@ -555,6 +575,15 @@
   return ( $windows );
   }

   +# *** ADDED dumb mode latest window ID ***
   +sub wmctrl_latest_window_id
   +{
   + my $window_id = `wmctrl -lpGx | tail -n 1 | sed -e ‘s/ .*//’`;
   + chomp($window_id);
   + return $window_id;
   +}
   +
   +
   # Hack: Check if 2 geometries are roughly equal:
   sub roughly_equal
   {

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