Does XFCE really work?

[GeekGirl1]

Originally Posted by k333y

I have been using the XFCE spin of Fedora 17, no issues here. However upon boot I get some error lines but once it loads no issues what so ever. I believe the issues have to do with me utilizing the default generic graphics driver and not the Nvidia specific ones. However I think, I will survive

I'm still on FC 16. Since I first installed FC15, I have a random chance that the desktop will crash after login. I thought this was due to my NVidia specific driver, but if someone has a problem using generic drivers, perhaps this is not the source of the problem.

If it crashes, the window frame borders are missing and I have to abort back to the login by Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.

After login, if the taskbar appears before my desktop icons, all is OK. If the desktop icons appear before the taskbar appears, the icons will appear under the taskbar and the environment is hosed.

I'm also experiencing intermittent problems with Firefox, where something happens and I am totally prevented from selecting any windows on the desktop.

I'll uncheck the "save session" box and see if the problem is fixed.

[tashirosgt]

Originally Posted by GeekGirl1

I'm also experiencing intermittent problems with Firefox, where something happens and I am totally prevented from selecting any windows on the desktop.

If you have a desktop machine, try using a different mouse. I have problems like that when I use certain types of USB mice ( "iOne" brand) and not with others ( "lenovo" = IBM).

Until XFCE can save sessions of LibreOffice writer, I judge it not really working. Is the bug that it can't reliably save two windows of some applications (such as two file browsers) still unfixed?

[jpollard]

Originally Posted by GeekGirl1

I'm still on FC 16. Since I first installed FC15, I have a random chance that the desktop will crash after login. I thought this was due to my NVidia specific driver, but if someone has a problem using generic drivers, perhaps this is not the source of the problem.

If it crashes, the window frame borders are missing and I have to abort back to the login by Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.

After login, if the taskbar appears before my desktop icons, all is OK. If the desktop icons appear before the taskbar appears, the icons will appear under the taskbar and the environment is hosed.

I'm also experiencing intermittent problems with Firefox, where something happens and I am totally prevented from selecting any windows on the desktop.

I'll uncheck the "save session" box and see if the problem is fixed.

Not yet. It is being worked on as bug https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=832084

You can also check and see if there are leftover processes owned by you after logout. I do this by switching to a VT and doing a "ps -u <user>", and if there are, I clean them out with a "killall -u <user> -s 9". I use signal 9 because others are caught and ignored.

Sometimes, this clears up the problem for a login or two. But it still leaves processes out there after logout, and doesn't always start the session quite right. It is almost as if the processes are started before the configuration is loaded, but if the configuration is loaded first, things appear correctly.

[GeekGirl1]

Thanks for the bug report. I'd like to help, so I followed your suggestions and opened a root VT.

My desktop is running FC 16 in a server configuration (apache, etc.), used for development. There are a LOT of processes running. I tried your suggestion and found that

pulseaudio
gconf-helper

were running after logout. When I killed all the processes, it hosed the XFCE window and I had to reboot. In hindsight, this makes sense.

To get some insight, I did a clean boot and removed .x-sessions-error to get a clean log. I captured the running processes up to the XFCE login window.

x-proc-B4-login.txt - all processes running up to the XFCE login window.

After login, I got the corrupted symptoms - the desktop icons appeared before the taskbar. (The window borders are now corrupted.)

xsession-errors-afterlogin.txt - errors after login, nautilus-gdu is shutdown

xsession-errors-before.txt - I forget when I captured this.
.xsession-errors.txt - the last file I captured.

My guess: I think a process is starting out of sync with something and the errors are cascading until nautilus finally gives up. It then attempts to restart and it's probably too late. The only way to fix this is to wait for a signal to start. Which signal to what process, I don't know.

(tracker-store:1946): Tracker-CRITICAL **: D-Bus service name:'org.freedesktop.Tracker1' is already taken, perhaps the daemon is already running?
Shutting down nautilus-gdu extension
Initializing nautilus-gdu extension

(nautilus:2356): libnotify-WARNING **: Failed to connect to proxy

Do you need any more information? Should this be filed with the bug report?

[jpollard]

sounds like you didn't do the killall -u <username>.

Once you are logged out, there should be no processes owned by you on the system. Now, the system does have pulseaudio running - but it is running as gdm instead. Hitting that one would cause problems until gdm is restarted. You also own a pulseaudio (at least you should when logged in, but not when logged out.

I too am running a server (NFS, apache, two VMs). 300 some processes total...

I didn't find the leftover processes until I ran for a couple of months logging in/out several times a day... and I ran out of processes.

I didn't find nautilus giving up - it just seemed to hang/wait forever in the background until I logged out, causing the desktop to go away. Of course, then nautilus put its display up and got aborted by the rest of the logout.