Starting Insync on Linux

On my many Arch Linux systems, I’d like an instance of Insync to run for me (vladimir) even I’m not logged in and for me to get a tray icon when I do log in.

I see insync-headless exists. But Insync’s systemd service file does not use insync-headless, just the usual insync, which I’ve been auto-starting when I when I start my desktop (currently xfce4, but it could be GNOME). Then I get a tray icon that lets me know Insync’s status. This is All Well And Good™.

I know that I can start Insync via systemd at boot. (systemctl start insync@vladimir) But that doesn’t seem to result in a tray icon. So, what to do?

Do I execute

systemctl enable insync-headless@vladimir
systemctl start insync-headless@vladimir

and then when I log in, run

`insync start` (or the equivalent `systemctl start insync@vladimir`)

or do I do something else?

Let me tag our engineer @lpugoy and he will get back to you.

@vgivanovic: Insync’s systemd service file was created by the Insync AUR packager, so I’m not really sure how it works. Maybe you’d have better luck asking at their forums: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/insync/. Apologies for the trouble.

@lpugoy systemd is a distraction in this case. All it does is execute insync start or insync quit in the context of the specified user. (I’m surprised you are not familiar with systemd because it has replaced the sysVinit system in many (most?) distributions: Fedora, Ubuntu, CentOS, Arch, …)

I figured out the answer to most of my questions. insync-headless is equivalent to insync --headless, and insync --headless starts insync without the tray icon. (This you could have told me because it has nothing to do with systemd. On the other hand, I could have read it in the man pages, which is what I belatedly did.)

There are two things which I still don’t know (which have nothing to do with systemd)

  1. If I start insync headless, can I later on, when I start an X11 session, get a tray icon without having stop and restart insync (without the --headless option)? If so, how?
  2. What does the preference “Start Insync when the computer starts” actually do? Does it really start when the computer boots, or does it start when an X11 session starts? I suppose I could check the next time I reboot…

Thanks.

@vgivanovic: There is no way to get the tray icon after running Insync in headless mode, you need to restart Insync without the --headless flag.

The autostart setting adds an entry in ~/.config/autostart, so it only starts when an X11 session is started.