Hello,

Just want to preface this by saying I’m fairly new to SysAdmin work. That said, I appreciate any insight and would kindly ask if replies could avoid assuming too much context. :)

I was tasked with opening a specific URL on every machine in the domain at a scheduled time. I set up a workflow (currently running only on manual starts from the Automation Hub) as follows:

1. Windows: Start-Process "explorer.exe" "[URL]"

2. macOS: open "[URL]"

3. Linux (Ubuntu 24 test machine): see below

On Windows and macOS, the commands work perfectly and the workflow ends as soon as the browser launches.

On Linux, however, I ran into issues. The Pulseway agent always seems to execute commands as root (even when the “Run as logged in user” option is selected).

I tried running the command as the seat0 user with runuser -u, but Firefox/xdg-open wasn’t inheriting $DISPLAY/$WAYLAND_DISPLAY, $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR, and $DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS correctly.

After a lot of band-aid fixing, I ended up with this super scuffed one-liner (I am aware this is probably very suboptimal, but it at least launches Firefox so I'm not touching it until I know more):

U=$(loginctl list-sessions --no-legend | awk '$4=="seat0" && $3!="gdm" && $3!="lightdm"{print $3; exit}'); if [ -n "$U" ]; then UID=$(id -u "$U");
(runuser -u "$U" -- bash -c '((
env WAYLAND_DISPLAY=wayland-0 
XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=/run/user/'"$UID"' 
DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS=unix:path=/run/user/'"$UID"'/bus
/usr/bin/firefox --no-remote --new-instance --new-window --start-maximized "[URL]"
>/dev/null 2>&1) &) & disown'); fi; exit 0

This does successfully launch Firefox with the URL, but the workflow action hangs for ~30 minutes (until max execution time hits, currently set to 1h).

I’ve tried:

• >/dev/null 2>&1 &

• nohup

• disown

• spawning a subshell and exiting it in hopes that would trigger the pulseway agent to get a kind of "command executed" signal.

But nothing has worked, the workflow still hangs instead of completing once the command is handed off.

So I think I’m misunderstanding something fundamental either about Linux process handling, or how Pulseway agents execute/track Linux commands within workflows.
Happy to provide any further information if needed, thank you in advance!

Veljko (Max)

Edited September 23Sep 23 by Veljko

Hey @Veljko - Thanks for reaching out! I'm going to raise a ticket to our support team about this and they'll be able to assist you here☺️