Session management in Linux

This is a session management script I did for our band’s gig. It worked pretty well, but I just thought maybe I should try to find something a little bit more modern? Mac users have Main Stage and stuff, and I’m just writing poor old BASH scripts. Luckily writing these is quite fun!

This script captures pids of all the processes it executes. That way I can kill every process individually. Nice! All the connections are made by QJackCtl Patchbay.

What do you think about this? And what session management I should try? Jack Session really didn’t work because many programs lack support for it.

 #!/bin/bash

cd /media/data/archtest-home/heikki/

#a2jmidid dbus service with hardware ports enabled
a2j -e &

#this starts the Mididings script
./studio/harmainvalta_livesetup.mididings &
MIDIDINGS_PID=$!

xdotool set_desktop 1
#mididings-gui. -T option makes it look better ;-)
livedings -T &
LIVEDINGS_PID=$!

sleep 1

xdotool set_desktop 4

linuxsampler&
LINUXSAMPLER_PID=$!

qsampler synat/GIGS/harmainvalta2.lscp &
QSAMPLER_PID=$!

qsynth --midi-driver=jack &
QSYNTH_PID=$

sleep 1

xdotool set_desktop 1

echo -e "\n\n\n####################################################"
echo -e "#  WELCOME TO HARMAINVALTA LIVE SETUP CONSOLE!     #"
echo -e "#################################################### \n\n"

while [ 1 ]; do

    echo -e "\n\nPress q to quit, p to see current processes"
    echo -e "r to restart a2jmidid, m to restart mididings, a to run start sequence ";
    # lets read the key press to $key variable:
    # -e means that after input comes a line feed and
    # -n 1 reads just one key without waiting enter.
    read -e -n 1 key
    echo -e "\n\n"

    if [ $key == "q" ] || [ $key == "Q" ]; then
        echo "Are you sure you want to quit? [y/n]"
        read -e -n 1 key
        if [ $key == "y" ]; then
            break;
        fi
    elif [ $key == "p" ] || [ $key == "P" ]; then
        jobs
    elif [ $key == "r" ] || [ $key == "R" ]; then
        killall -9 a2jmidid
        a2j -e &
        sleep 1
    elif [ $key == "m" ] || [ $key == "M" ]; then
        kill $MIDIDINGS_PID
        ./studio/harmainvalta_livesetup.mididings &
        sleep 1
        MIDIDINGS_PID=$!
    elif [ $key == "a" ] || [ $key == "A" ]; then
        echo "Are you sure you want to run start sequence? [y/n]"
        read -e -n 1 key
        if [ $key == "y" ]; then
            mplayer -ao jack -volume 35 "./samplet/MINA LAHDEN YKSIN.wav"
        fi
    fi

done

killall -9 a2jmidid
kill $QSYNTH_PID
kill $LINUXSAMPLER_PID
kill $QSAMPLER_PID
kill $LIVEDINGS_PID
kill $MIDIDINGS_PID

echo -e "\nLivesetup terminated! Have a nice day!"

The only problem I really had with this was that at the last time Intro sequence didn’t start. I think mplayer isn’t the best option for playing raw wavs through Jack.