XFCE logout icon fails or freezes desktop

[tashirosgt]

On a FC 16 X86_64 system updated yesterday, I find this bug with the XFCE logout (via the icon with the green man) is still present. http://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=6580

The bug mentioned in the thread is that left clicking on the icon either doesn't do anything or it freezes the desktop. In my case, I observe that the mouse cursor is visible, the keyboard works in whatever window happens to be in focus, but nothing on the screen responds to mouse clicks. Ctrl-Alt-F2 does work to bring up a console. The fix mentioned in the thread is to uncheck the box that says to save the session for future use. I managed to do this without deleting the xfce4-session file.

restarting the machine in failsafe mode and deleting

$HOME/.cache/sessions/xfce4-session-*

where * is the machine:display.

.

I think I had left clicked on the icon, then I right clicked on it and picked properties and the logout menu appeared - perhaps the delayed appearance was unrelated to my actions.

Has this bug been mentioned on fedoraforum for the FC 16 XFCE spin? Do others experience it?

[george_toolan]

This doesn't sound like a freeze if you can still use it.

Looks like just the window manager crashed. You should be able to restart it from the console.

[tashirosgt]

Originally Posted by george_toolan

This doesn't sound like a freeze if you can still use it.

When it happens, I can't use the desktop, so I'm going to call it a freeze!

Looks like just the window manager crashed. You should be able to restart it from the console.

Should I be able to find a report of the window manager crashing in one of the logs? And would ps -ef show the window manager as a process if it had crashed? (I saw nothing in the logs, but I haven't tried ps -ef yet.)

My main interest is whether other XFCE spin users notice this bug. Surely many of them have checked the "save session" option on the logout menu. Or does this bug indicate that I personally have something misconfigured?

[bigflopper2]

look up if xfwm4 is stored under the session programs, like xfdesktop, xfsettingsd, xfce4-panel, if not start it and restart

edit: I had this problem on Xfce 4.8 as well (sometimes), after updating to 4.10 it's gone, the repo can be found here

Originally Posted by tashirosgt

[...]

My main interest is whether other XFCE spin users notice this bug. Surely many of them have checked the "save session" option on the logout menu. [...]

I'm using the spin on my notebook and never had any issues with the spin

[tashirosgt]

This is what I have in the way of xfce rpms:

[cosmo@comp12 ~]$ rpm -qa | grep xfce
xfce4-panel-4.8.6-3.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-mixer-4.8.0-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-settings-4.8.3-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-eyes-plugin-4.4.1-3.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-doc-4.8.3-2.fc16.noarch
xfce4-smartbookmark-plugin-0.4.4-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-genmon-plugin-3.3.0-3.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-xkb-plugin-0.5.4.1-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-time-out-plugin-1.0.0-2.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-mount-plugin-0.5.5-6.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-icon-theme-4.4.3-5.fc15.noarch
xfce4-notes-plugin-1.7.7-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-diskperf-plugin-2.3.0-2.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-fsguard-plugin-1.0.0-3.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-dict-plugin-0.6.0-4.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-quicklauncher-plugin-1.9.4-9.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-mailwatch-plugin-1.1.0-9.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-netload-plugin-1.1.0-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-verve-plugin-1.0.0-2.fc15.x86_64
libxfce4util-4.8.2-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-places-plugin-1.2.0-6.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-cellmodem-plugin-0.0.5-5.fc16.x86_64
imsettings-xfce-1.2.9-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-clipman-plugin-1.2.2-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-systemload-plugin-1.0.0-2.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-notifyd-0.2.2-1.fc16.x86_64
gtk-xfce-engine-2.8.1-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-screenshooter-1.8.0-2.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-sensors-plugin-1.2.3-1.fc16.x86_64
libxfce4ui-4.8.1-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-timer-plugin-0.6.1-7.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-websearch-plugin-0.1.1-0.14.20070428svn2704.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-power-manager-1.0.10-2.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-xfswitch-plugin-0.0.1-3.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-screenshooter-plugin-1.8.0-2.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-battery-plugin-1.0.0-2.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-appfinder-4.8.0-2.fc15.x86_64
libxfcegui4-4.8.1-3.fc15.x86_64
xfce-utils-4.8.3-2.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-weather-plugin-0.7.4-2.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-taskmanager-1.0.0-2.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-dict-0.6.0-4.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-session-engines-4.8.2-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-datetime-plugin-0.6.1-7.fc15.x86_64
xfce4-session-4.8.2-1.fc16.x86_64
xfce4-cpugraph-plugin-1.0.1-3.fc15.x86_64
[cosmo@comp12 ~]$

Edit: I followed the link to the file that adds the fedora-xfce-4.10 repo. When I do yum update, I get the error:

--> Finished Dependency Resolution
Error: Package: xfburn-0.4.3-5.fc16.x86_64 (@koji-override-0/$releasever)
           Requires: libxfce4util.so.4()(64bit)
           Removing: libxfce4util-4.8.2-1.fc16.x86_64 (@koji-override-0/$releasever)
               libxfce4util.so.4()(64bit)
           Updated By: libxfce4util-4.10.0-1.fc16.x86_64 (fedora-xfce-4.10)
               Not found
 You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
 You could try running: rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest
[root@comp12 ~]#

xfburn is a DVD burning package that I added (as recommended in another thread of fedoraforum). I'm tempted to take the hint and use "--skipbroken", but does anyone happen to know if xfburn will still work with the newer libxfceutil package?

[bigflopper2]

according to your problems you've to do this and this

any btw, Xfce 4.10 is a joy

su-
cd /etc/yum.repos.d
wget http://repos.fedorapeople.org/repos/...xfce-4.10.repo

su -c'yum erase remmina-plugins-rdp'
su -c'yum erase xfburn'
su -c'yum update --nogpgcheck'

[tashirosgt]

Thank you, Mr. big. I'll try that.

I'm curious about the "sociological" pheomena of this. Was the logout bug (and perahps others) in XFCE 4.8 noticed by a lot of Fedora users? Are there old messages on the forum about it? (Must I join a XFCE forum to keep up to date on these things?) If XFCE 4.10 is the answer, why isn't XFCE 4.10 in the default repos?

[bigflopper2]

Xfce 4.10 for fedora is still "in progress"

[tashirosgt]

Just so other people consulting this thread will know, it does not (yet) have a happy ending. I did a yum remove xfburn. Then (with the XFCE 4.10 repo mentioned above added to my /etc/yum.repos.d directory) I did a yum update. XFCE 4.10 was installed as well as other updates from the other repos.

Now I have slightly different problems.

The problem with checking the "save session" box on the logout icon is solved because in XFCE 4.10 they removed that check box from the icon!

However, the desktop suffers peculiar and temporary hangs and freezes. Playing a few YouTube videos in Firefox is one activity that brings on the symptoms. (They don't always happen while a video is playing.) Sometimes, for a minute or so, nothing will work on the desktop although the mouse cursor will show. At other times, things on the desktop work except for the little icons ( the "x" meaning close, etc.) on the bar above the windows.

The system doesn't freeze to the point where numlock doesn't work and I am able to get a console with Ctrl-Alt-F2. However, when I get into the console and look at the log files, I don't see any problems. I don't see anything strange about the output of top.

I'll try some random things and report on this again.

[bigflopper2]

it looks like it's not about Xfce, what kind of graphic drivers (free/proprietary) are installed and do you have similar problems with other DEs?

[tashirosgt]

Originally Posted by bigflopper2

it looks like it's not about Xfce, what kind of graphic drivers (free/proprietary) are installed

I used the driver that the Fedora installation picked, which is "nouveau", if I have the spelling correct.

and do you have similar problems with other DEs?

What? I'm supposed to torture myself by installing another desktop?

I agree it could be the graphics driver, the hardware, etc. However, I used the machine a little last night (which involved rebooting it for about the second time since XFCE 4.10 was installed) and I didn't have any problems. So another theory is that XFCE 4.8 wrote some bad files when it "saved session" and that these have finally been overwritten.

Do problems with the graphics driver usually result in symptoms that I can detect in the log files? If not, can I configure the logger so that they will?

------
Update: XFCE 4.10 apparently solves the problem with the "save session" option by never saving sessions. My sessoins aren't saved even though the option is checked in Appplications Menu->Settings->Sessions and Startup. (This is ironic. I began my FC 16 adventure by switching from Gnome 3 to LXDE. I didn't like LXDE since it wouldn't save sessions, so I switched to XFCE because of that!)

I haven't had any partial freezes lately. However, I have had the problem of a being unable to un-minimize an application (Thunderbird). Sometimes a minimized application gets into a state where un-minimizing it only shows the bar on top of its window and not the rest of the window. I suppose the XFCE 4.10 problems belong in a new thread. I'll start one.

-----

Update: I got around to installing XFCE 4.10 on a second computer (different motherboard, same modles of HDs). On the first reboot after installing XFCE 4.10, I logged in an got a session with some applications running that I had used in XFCE 4.8. There were several terminals. I closed two of them. I went to the Sessions And Startup and checked the box to save the session automatically on log out. I logged out. I logged back in and the system froze after the desktop background appeared. It froze hard. The numlock key would not toggled the LED on the keyboard, nor would ctrl-alt-F1 get me a console. I turned the power off by holding down the power button. I rebooted. I got the orginal session again with the original termals all open. I closed some of the terminals. I went to Sessions And Startup -> Session tab and clicked on Save session button. I logged out. When I logged back in, I got a revised session without the terminals that I had closed.

On this second machine XFCE 4.10 also won't save sessions automatically on logout, even though I left that box checked. It won't save sessions of LibreOffice writer but other applications are saved when I manually click the Save session button. I haven't tried saving sessions of the other LibreOffice components yet. I haven't had any freezes - yet.