This is the first of two short blog posts today. After installing Skype on Kim’s netbook, for some reason I couldn’t add it to the Startup Applications list. I’d go through the usual procedure: System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications, add it and verify it was in the list, but after a restart, the list reverted to its previous settings; no changes I made were saved.

I went investigating and it appears that others are having the same problem. Some queries on this issue were posted as little as two days ago.

The only reason I could think of was to do with permissions. The startup applications data are held in the /home/<username>/.config/autostart directory, so I checked the permissions of this folder on my laptop, running Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic and saw permissions of drwxr-xr-x. On Kim’s netbook, running Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 Karmic the permissions were set so that only root had the rights to modify this directory.

Changing the permissions, then, is a trivial matter. Simply open a terminal window and type:

sudo chmod -R o+wrx /home/<username>/.config/autostart

Obviously, replace <username> with your own username, shown before the @ sign in the command prompt. After you’ve run this command, try changing the startup applications again, and everything should work.