XFCE problem

[Martin Gregorie]

Earlier tonight XFCE seems to have corrupted itself and I haven't any
idea how to sort it out. Here's the scene:

Ever since I installed F17 I've been using XFCE as my default desktop and
it has always been plagued with an intermittent problem in which it
looses contact with the keyboard but the mouse continues to work, so the
fix is simply to logout and login again - annoying but it works. I
haven't bugged it because I haven't any idea of what is causing the
problem.

Tonight it bit again, so I saved the e-mail I was writing with Evolution,
logged out and logged in again. This time the desktop came up with a
borked window manager. Applications would open but:

- the application window's title bar and outline are not shown

- this means that windows can't be resized or moved

- application window buttons don't appear in the window selector

- the desktop selector has collapsed to a single desktop and no longer
shows an windows in the one remaining desktop image

- Menu bars 1 and 2 (top and bottom of screen) lost their ability to
stop windows overlapping them.

- the Windows Manager configuration applet just shows a blank screen

I've tried logging out & in again and rebooting the machine but neither
action helps. Obviously something is stopping XCFE's window manager
component from running, but what's causing this?

Any insights and suggestions to getting XFCE to work properly will be
most welcome.

In the meantime I've reverted to Gnome 3 and am hating it. I looked
briefly at KDE and find it very pretty but baffling and not to my taste.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |

[Martin Gregorie]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:38:48 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:

> Earlier tonight XFCE seems to have corrupted itself and I haven't any
> idea how to sort it out. Here's the scene:
>

.... snippage ....

> Any insights and suggestions to getting XFCE to work properly will be
> most welcome.
>

I just had a thought: would simply deleting ~/.config/xfce4 and its
contents do the trick?

[Gordon]

On 2012-09-21, Martin Gregorie <mar...@address-in-sig.invalid> wrote:
> Earlier tonight XFCE seems to have corrupted itself and I haven't any
> idea how to sort it out. Here's the scene:
>
> Ever since I installed F17 I've been using XFCE as my default desktop and
> it has always been plagued with an intermittent problem in which it
> looses contact with the keyboard but the mouse continues to work, so the
> fix is simply to logout and login again - annoying but it works. I
> haven't bugged it because I haven't any idea of what is causing the
> problem.

Fedora, by definition is on the cutting edge, or pushing the front of the
envelope hard. Expect things to break more often.

XFCE4 is only distantly related to Fedora. You may wish to get a more stable
core to put it on.

>
> In the meantime I've reverted to Gnome 3 and am hating it. I looked
> briefly at KDE and find it very pretty but baffling and not to my taste.
>

Nothing wrong there.

I find it so interesting that the light desktop enviornments have lurched
back from their heading towards the exit desktop door and are now battling
it out, both with each other and the heavy weights. This despite the
processing power and memory having increased to deal easily with the heavy
weights.

It shows things on many levels.

[Dave Farrance]

Martin Gregorie <mar...@address-in-sig.invalid> wrote:

>On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:38:48 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>
>> Any insights and suggestions to getting XFCE to work properly will be
>> most welcome.

No idea, but as a starter, how about checking if the WM in actually not
running or just misbehaving? pgrep xfwm4

And if it's not running, then start it from a terminal? I'm not sure what
happens if it's started *after* the desktop, but if you want to risk a few
experiments to try to figure out what's happening, there's that...

>I just had a thought: would simply deleting ~/.config/xfce4 and its
>contents do the trick?

Backups? I keep a copy of my previous distro on a separate partition, so
if there's problems, I can boot into that. And that means that I can run
backups of the new setup from there from time to time. So I can restore
stuff from a few weeks back. Or do backup, drastic-experiment, restore.

[chris]

On 21/09/2012 03:11, Martin Gregorie wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:38:48 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>
>> Earlier tonight XFCE seems to have corrupted itself and I haven't any
>> idea how to sort it out. Here's the scene:
>>
> .... snippage ....
>
>> Any insights and suggestions to getting XFCE to work properly will be
>> most welcome.
>>
> I just had a thought: would simply deleting ~/.config/xfce4 and its
> contents do the trick?

Yeah, it should do, but make a copy of the tree first (just in case).

I had a similar problem in F16 where I was using XFCE, but everyone else
was on Gnome3. Every now and again the Gnome shell would appear in my
XFCE sessions thereby covering up the menus and top status bar.

I needed to delete every config file I could find for XFCE and Gnome
before I could get rid of it... However, it would still come back
occasionally - I've now reverted to Gnome 3 only.

Moral of the story is that XFCE is well supported in Fedora.

I'm contemplating moving to Xubuntu...

[Chris Whelan]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 09:07:58 +0100, chris wrote:

[...]

> I'm contemplating moving to Xubuntu...

Have you considered Mint 13 XFCE?

It's running really well on a couple of old laptops that I've lent to
folk in order to introduce them to the wonders of Linux.

Chris

--
Remove prejudice to reply.

[mechanic]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 08:17:10 GMT, Chris Whelan wrote:

> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 09:07:58 +0100, chris wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> I'm contemplating moving to Xubuntu...
>
> Have you considered Mint 13 XFCE?

Xubuntu's ok, I have it running here with some nice AWN icons in a
bar at the bottom and one of the excellent Voyager images as
background, and a Conky setup copied from there too.

[chris]

On 21/09/2012 09:17, Chris Whelan wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 09:07:58 +0100, chris wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> I'm contemplating moving to Xubuntu...
>
> Have you considered Mint 13 XFCE?
>
> It's running really well on a couple of old laptops that I've lent to
> folk in order to introduce them to the wonders of Linux.
>

Another attraction of Xubuntu 12.04 is the LTS - the 18month lifespan of
fedora releases is starting to be a pain.

Does Mint do LTS as well...?

[Chris Whelan]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:39:17 +0100, chris wrote:

[...]

> Another attraction of Xubuntu 12.04 is the LTS - the 18month lifespan of
> fedora releases is starting to be a pain.
>
> Does Mint do LTS as well...?

Xubuntu LTS is only for three years:

http://xubuntu.org/about/

whereas it's planned for Mint 13 XFCE to be supported for the full five
years:

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=90&t=110028

It's one of the reasons I went with Mint.

[chris]

I didn't know that about Mint, thanks. Although, three years is probably
enough for me. We had/have CentOS 5 at work at that got really crufty
before CentOS 6 came out.

[Nick Leverton]

I know many people don't think of Debian as a desktop system, but it's
worth mentioning that a) it's very stable even across releases, and
b) you get typically around three years of active support there too
(depending exactly where in the release cycle you install). Plus of
course it gives you all the same nicely thought out package management
as Ubuntu.

All you basically miss is Unity, plus being about six to nine months
behind bleeding edge at the time of release, due to the fact they decline
to chase moving targets during the few months before it comes out.

Nick
--
"The Internet, a sort of ersatz counterfeit of real life"
-- Janet Street-Porter, BBC2, 19th March 1996

[Tony Houghton]

In <k3i8rj$kbm$1...@leverton.org>,

Nick Leverton <ni...@leverton.org> wrote:

> I know many people don't think of Debian as a desktop system, but it's
> worth mentioning that a) it's very stable even across releases, and
> b) you get typically around three years of active support there too
> (depending exactly where in the release cycle you install). Plus of
> course it gives you all the same nicely thought out package management
> as Ubuntu.
>
> All you basically miss is Unity, plus being about six to nine months
> behind bleeding edge at the time of release, due to the fact they decline
> to chase moving targets during the few months before it comes out.

Or you can track "testing" and just do a little upgrading as often as
you like instead of going through a major upheaval every few years. I
prefer it that way, except I go one further and use "unstable"/"sid" -
and even "experimental" for some packages. I'd recommend getting to know
the package manager quite well before using sid though.

There's an alternative version of Mint based on Debian testing.

--
TH * http://www.realh.co.uk

[mechanic]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 14:46:42 GMT, Chris Whelan wrote:

> Xubuntu LTS is only for three years:
>
> http://xubuntu.org/about/

Ubuntu LTS releases are supported for five years now (new in 12.04)
the page for Xubuntu probably hasn't been updated yet.
http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop

[Jim Price]

It said three years in the Xubuntu release announcement too, so I doubt
it is an error on the about page. Different Ubuntu flavours can and do
have different LTS schedules. It probably means you won't get Xubuntu
specific updates after three years, but shared stuff like kernels, xorg
etc. will continue to be updated for 5 years. You won't be able to post
bugs against Xubuntu after three years either. The biggest issue I can
forsee with it is that it is stuck with GTK 2.24.10, whereas a lot of
Ubuntu apps are now GTK 3.x. Fedora 17 has GTK 3.4.3 and XFdesktop
4.9.3 according to distrowatch. That sounds like a possible cause of the
problems the OP is experiencing to me, as 4.9.x signifies a development
release. I have no idea if that has been updated to XFCE 4.10 now that
has been released, as I gave up on Fedora some time ago, and I haven't
used XFCE since 2007. If I was going to use Fedora now, I would be
looking at using Enlightenment to avoid the Gnome 3 silliness. It looks
like it might be a non-trivial installation though.

--
╔═╦═╦═════╦═══╗
║ ║ ║ ║ ║
╔═╝ ║ ║ ║ ║ ║ ╔═╝
╚═══╩═╩═╩═╩═╩═╝ -- JimP.

[Giovanna Stefani]

Nick Leverton scrive:

>
> I know many people don't think of Debian as a desktop system,

They don't? How weird!

> worth mentioning that a) it's very stable even across releases, and b)
> you get typically around three years of active support there too
> (depending exactly where in the release cycle you install). Plus of
> course it gives you all the same nicely thought out package management
> as Ubuntu.

Why use Debian derivatives when you can have the real thing?
Easy to install and easy to use. Works for me.

--
Giovanna
Debian 6 user

[mechanic]

On 22 Sep 2012 11:18:21 GMT, Giovanna Stefani wrote:

> Why use Debian derivatives when you can have the real thing?
> Easy to install and easy to use. Works for me.

I got fed up with re-compiling the wifi driver each time the kernel
number changed.

[Aragorn]

On Saturday 22 September 2012 17:03, mechanic conveyed the following to
uk.comp.os.linux...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_Kernel_Module_Support

You can stop your trolling about this subject now, in all newsgroups you
were doing it.

--
= Aragorn =
(registered GNU/Linux user #223157)

[Nick Leverton]

In article <slrnk5ph...@realh.co.uk>,

I follow Testing on this laptop now and my hosted server is running
Wheezy already ;-) but the main desktop where I posted from before is
strictly Stable+bpo territory ... tbh until recently it's mostly getting
stable video drivers that have prompted my upgrades. But even unstable
is relatively stable except just after a release :)

[Martin Gregorie]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 06:52:20 +0100, Dave Farrance wrote:

> Martin Gregorie <mar...@address-in-sig.invalid> wrote:
>
>>On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 00:38:48 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>>
>>> Any insights and suggestions to getting XFCE to work properly will be
>>> most welcome.
>
> No idea, but as a starter, how about checking if the WM in actually not
> running or just misbehaving? pgrep xfwm4
>

Its definitely not running.

> And if it's not running, then start it from a terminal? I'm not sure
> what happens if it's started *after* the desktop, but if you want to
> risk a few experiments to try to figure out what's happening, there's
> that...
>

That works, and all the stuff that wasn't working (including the window
manager preferences applet) now work.

Thanks for the suggestion.

>>I just had a thought: would simply deleting ~/.config/xfce4 and its
>>contents do the trick?
>
> Backups?

Even easier - I just renamed the .config/xfce4 directory and logged in
with XFCE - a new xfce4 directory appeared, but didn't contain the xfwm4
directory. Manually starting xfwm4 caused that to be set up.

I'm using XFCE to post this reply after starting XFwm4 manually, so
haven't found out yet if it now starts automatically.

> I keep a copy of my previous distro on a separate partition,
> so if there's problems, I can boot into that. And that means that I can
> run backups of the new setup from there from time to time. So I can
> restore stuff from a few weeks back. Or do backup, drastic-experiment,
> restore.
>

I have another XFCE login that was unaffected by this problem, so it
serves as a reference and source of lost files.

I'll logout and in again and then say whether xfwm4 is coming up
automatically.

[Martin Gregorie]

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 22:35:51 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:

> I'll logout and in again and then say whether xfwm4 is coming up
> automatically.

Yes, it does. So the workround would seem to be:
- delete .config/xfce4
- logout/login
- manually start xfwm4 from a terminal
- logout/login
- fix any changes you made to Panel 2, which will have been lost.

I meant to say: this also fixed the broken menu-bar apps (Window Buttons
and Window Switcher - obviously they watch what xfwm4 is doing). Oddly,
additional desktop icons/launchers survive this upheaval. The only other
collateral damage was that Window Switcher forgot it has 4 workspaces and
reverted to just one. Setting it back to 4 'just worked'.

Many thanks for your help.

[alexd]

Gordon (for it is he) wrote:

> It shows things on many levels.

I'll have to remember that one for the next time someone asks me for my
analysis of a complicated situation ;-)

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) (UnSoEs...@ale.cx)
21:06:06 up 11 days, 20:00, 6 users, load average: 0.63, 0.95, 0.88
Qua illic est reprehendit, illic est a vindicatum

[alexd]

mechanic (for it is he) wrote:

> I got fed up with re-compiling the wifi driver each time the kernel
> number changed.

A silly reason to switch distros.

Compare:

- How many hours of your time would it take for you to switch distros and
get settled in
- How much money could you earn in that time
- How much a wifi adaptor with a mainstream-supported chipset costs

and see if you can work out what the sensible course of action would be :-)

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) (UnSoEs...@ale.cx)

21:09:22 up 11 days, 20:04, 6 users, load average: 0.48, 0.63, 0.76

[Martin Gregorie]

On Fri, 21 Sep 2012 05:23:42 +0000, Gordon wrote:

> On 2012-09-21, Martin Gregorie <mar...@address-in-sig.invalid> wrote:
>> Earlier tonight XFCE seems to have corrupted itself and I haven't any
>> idea how to sort it out. Here's the scene:
>>
>> Ever since I installed F17 I've been using XFCE as my default desktop
>> and it has always been plagued with an intermittent problem in which it
>> looses contact with the keyboard but the mouse continues to work, so
>> the fix is simply to logout and login again - annoying but it works. I
>> haven't bugged it because I haven't any idea of what is causing the
>> problem.
>

I now have a hint of what is causing this problem. I think it is caused
by a 'you have mail' pop-up triggered by Evolution when I'm typing
something into another program. IIRC this has happened when I was writing
an e-mail in Evolution or typing into a terminal window. Currently I'm
90% certain that it happened when the mail notification was displayed and
uncertain exactly what program I was using when it happened. If/when it
happens again I'll take note of what I was typing into at the time and
file a bug.

> Fedora, by definition is on the cutting edge, or pushing the front of
> the envelope hard. Expect things to break more often.
>
> XFCE4 is only distantly related to Fedora. You may wish to get a more
> stable core to put it on.
>

I'm pretty happy with Fedora and see no reason for not continuing to use
it. I could regard finding and reporting bugs as a reasonable payment for
having such a system made freely available, but in truth its mostly 'just
worked' on the hardware I've used over the last 14 years, so that has
been a very reasonable price to pay - mostly limited to the effort of
installing a later version though by now even that is not a big burden
now I've built up a set of scripts and way of working that makes it
fairly painless.

Of course there have been one or two glitches, e.g. if its been up and
running for more than a day or two a USB mouse is ignored until its been
unplugged and reconnected [since F13/Gnome 2 and still present in F16/
XFCE] and F15 didn't correctly unmount a USB drive [fixed with F16] but
I've never had a show stopper since I've been using Fedora.

The only really annoying stuff has been the flakiness of the F15 version
of Evolution and the bucket of shite called Gnome. It used to be OK but
became crap when they screwed up the final versions of G2 by releasing
incomplete re-implementations of major components (and even documented
the stuff they couldn't be arsed to finish!). IME all versions of G3 are
obnoxious to use - hence my switch to XFCE.

> I find it so interesting that the light desktop enviornments have
> lurched back from their heading towards the exit desktop door and are
> now battling it out, both with each other and the heavy weights. This
> despite the processing power and memory having increased to deal easily
> with the heavy weights.
>

My take of this, mainly due to my experiences with Gnome, is that the
developers got bored with merely fixing bugs and started making changes
for changes sake and mostly without thinking through the impact that
these might have in usability, e.g. the two things I find really annoying
about G3 are:
- the way that new windows open in the top left of the screen *and* the
way the top-left hotspot expands over time and tends to grab attention
when all you want is the left end of menu in the nearest window
- the slowness and general annoyance of the System:Applications window.
For me this is much worse to use than the old
Applications:Places:System menu triad it replaces. Worse, it seems to
be poorly designed and implemented imitation of one of M$'s worse ideas

So much for Gnome. My impression of KDE as it currently stands is that
its very pretty, but arty design had totally triumphed over utility.
Maybe I'd like it if I was prepared to buckle down and learn it, but why
should I bother when I can be productive immediately with XFCE?

In conclusion: unlike the poor sods who're stuck with whatever Apple or
Microsoft decide is good for them, at least we have a choice of desktops.

[mechanic]

On Tue, 25 Sep 2012 21:14:34 +0100, alexd wrote:

> mechanic (for it is he) wrote:
>
>> I got fed up with re-compiling the wifi driver each time the kernel
>> number changed.
>
> A silly reason to switch distros.
>
> Compare:
>
> - How many hours of your time
> would it take for you to switch distros and
> get settled in
> - How much money could you earn in that time
> - How much a wifi adaptor with a mainstream-supported chipset costs
>
> and see if you can work out what the sensible course of action would be :-)

Not silly at all, in fact a change of distro was entirely sensible.

[alexd]

mechanic (for it is he) wrote:

> Not silly at all, in fact a change of distro was entirely sensible.

A thoroughly convincing argument.

--
<http://ale.cx/> (AIM:troffasky) (UnSoEs...@ale.cx)

18:35:17 up 12 days, 17:19, 7 users, load average: 0.94, 0.74, 0.77