Autostart strangeness

[Patrick O'Callaghan]

I use qBittorrent for torrent downloads, and since I have a slowish
connection and tend to download large files I want it to be running all
the time while I'm logged in (BTW why do all the BT clients require you
to log in? another "benefit" of GUIs I guess).

Anyway, I configured Autostart to fire up QBT on login, but I also use
"save session" in KDE. Guess what: I get two instances of QBT running.
Now the odd thing is that QBT is a "single instance" app. It's supposed
to detect a running copy and not start another one. However the way it
does this is by looking for a /tmp/qBittorrent-<uid> file. This actually
works. There is a (single) file there when the two instances are
running, and if I try to start a third one from the Shell it quite
rightly refuses.

I disabled the instance in Autostart and re-logged in. Now I get one
instance, and one file in /tmp. So problem solved, but why?

Is it possible that the first (Autostart) instance of QBT creates the
file, and something in the KDE startup sequence deletes it before the
second (saved session) instance fires up? I can't think of another
explanation, but IMHO this is Bad.

poc