Autostarting dithering mode

[aburley79]

Hi, I'm trying to set up auto start - setting the colours is fine. But im trying to get dithering to autostart as well:

[Unit]
Description=Apply nvibrant
After=graphical.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 1
ExecStart= ATTRIBUTE=dithering nvibrant
ExecStart= nvibrant 0 300 0 300


[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

If I take the dithering line out, no problem. Just leaving dithering in and removing the colour line, I get this when enabling:

❯ systemctl --user enable --now nvibrant.service
Job for nvibrant.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl --user status nvibrant.service" and "journalctl --user -xeu nvibrant.service" for details.

Being new to CachyOS, am I correct that I can have multiple ExecStart lines? Would you please help me with this?

I tried

ExecStart= nvibrant ATTRIBUTE=dithering nvibrant
ExecStart= nvibrant 0 300 0 300

Suggesting that the dithering setting is still wrong.

Thank you!

[Tremeschin]

I think you'd need the env command under systemd, as it's not interpreted as shell¹ commands:

ExecStart=/usr/bin/env ATTRIBUTE=dithering nvibrant
ExecStart=/usr/bin/env ATTRIBUTE=vibrance nvibrant 0 300 0 300

Seems like it supports two ExecStarts, but I'd recommend making two separate vibrance and dithering users services

Footnotes

1. For example, it should work with /bin/bash -c 'ATTRIBUTE=dithering nvibrant' the way you're expecting it to ↩

[aburley79]

Thanks for the reply, I have done that now.

ExecStart= ATTRIBUTE=dithering nvibrant

on it's own in the service still gives

❯ systemctl --user enable --now nvibrant.service
Job for nvibrant.service failed because the control process exited with error code.

The error codes are:

❯ systemctl --user status nvibrant.service
× nvibrant.service - Apply nvibrant
     Loaded: loaded (/home/abu/.config/systemd/user/nvibrant.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2026-03-10 00:59:42 GMT; 2min 6s ago
 Invocation: 3cb657231a7d4afb80be0bce0e8f36a6
    Process: 7245 ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 5 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
    Process: 7250 ExecStart=ATTRIBUTE=dithering nvibrant (code=exited, status=203/EXEC)
   Main PID: 7250 (code=exited, status=203/EXEC)
   Mem peak: 2.2M
        CPU: 16ms

Mar 10 00:59:37 CachyOS systemd[1430]: Starting Apply nvibrant...
Mar 10 00:59:42 CachyOS (ATTRIBUTE=dithering)[7250]: nvibrant.service: Unable to locate executable 'ATTRIBUTE=dithering': No such file or directory
Mar 10 00:59:42 CachyOS (ATTRIBUTE=dithering)[7250]: nvibrant.service: Failed at step EXEC spawning ATTRIBUTE=dithering: No such file or directory
Mar 10 00:59:42 CachyOS systemd[1430]: nvibrant.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=203/EXEC
Mar 10 00:59:42 CachyOS systemd[1430]: nvibrant.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Mar 10 00:59:42 CachyOS systemd[1430]: Failed to start Apply nvibrant.

Doesn't happen with the colour vibrancy service tho.

[Tremeschin]

Unable to locate executable 'ATTRIBUTE=dithering': No such file or directory

Looks like you haven't prefixed ExecStart with /usr/bin/env, double check my last comment 😉

Note how it's trying to run ATTRIBUTE=dithering as the binary name and failing. Again, this syntax is interpreted and solved by a shell environment, which is not the case here (unless the command itself is shell -c 'commands')

Your service should look something like:

[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStartPre=/bin/sleep 1
ExecStart=/usr/bin/env ATTRIBUTE=dithering nvibrant
ExecStart=nvibrant 0 300 0 300

Or the previous's comment one for also explicitly setting the 'vibrance' attribute (default) in the second command

[aburley79]

Thank you, that is now working great. Appreciate your help!

[Tremeschin]

Awesome, and thanks for reaching out, will improve the readme section eventually!