Arch Linux

jayflo

Member

Registered: 2013-09-06

Posts: 33

xfce font change caused window/panel crash

I just installed arch linux w/ xfce4 on my UX31A laptop for the first time yesterday.  I had everything up and going...but today I was changing my font in:

Settings Manager > Appearance > Font

and after testing out one of the various fonts, my desktop panel and windows disappeared (though I can still open google chrome).  I've tried reopening the settings manager from terminal using:

xfce4-appearance-settings

but receive the following error:

xfce4-appearance-settings: cairo-scaled-font.c:459: _cairo_scaled_glyph_page_destroy: Assertion `!scaled_font->cache_frozen' failed.
Aborted (core dumped)

I'm sure I can fix this by finding the file in which the font setting is saved and changing it to another font, but I'm not sure where this is.  Any ideas?  Also, how can I prevent this in the future?  Thanks for the help!

Last edited by jayflo (2013-09-07 15:36:17)

Steef435

Member

Registered: 2013-08-29

Posts: 577

Website

Re: xfce font change caused window/panel crash

Gtk's font settings can be changed in ~/.gtkrc-2.0:

gtk-font-name="Sans 10"

And for Gtk3 the config file is ~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini:

[Settings]
gtk-font-name=Sans 10

You can also use configuration software like lxappearance

More information can be found on the wiki:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Gtk

I have no clue about the error though. What font were you trying to use?

Last edited by Steef435 (2013-09-07 16:44:28)

jayflo

Member

Registered: 2013-09-06

Posts: 33

Re: xfce font change caused window/panel crash

I think the name of the font which caused problems is "Clean."

Creating the first two files and setting the font did not work.

I installed lxappearance and it was able to open and change the font, but my panels did not reappear.  I logged out of xfce and started it again, and the font reset itself to "Clean."  In fact, whenever I close and reopen the lxappearance window (via the terminal), the font is reset to "Clean." 

What do you think?

EDIT:
When attempting to open the desktop panel via the terminal command

xfce4-panel

I receive the following error:

The program 'wrapper' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadWindow (invalid Window parameter)'.
  (Details: serial 284 error_code 3 request_code 2 minor_code 0)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

Last edited by jayflo (2013-09-07 17:08:22)

Steef435

Member

Registered: 2013-08-29

Posts: 577

Website

Re: xfce font change caused window/panel crash

Did you hit Apply before you closed lxappearance? Otherwise the change is just a preview. Did you also run lxappearance as the same user that's having trouble with the panel?

If that doesn't do it, try running xfce4-settings-editor. Don't get your hopes up though
xfce4-settings-editor
Go to the channel "xsettings" and edit /Gtk/FontName to something sensible, or reset it.

Otherwise, this should be able to reset the Gtk font property(See here: http://docs.xfce.org/xfce/xfconf/xfconf-query).
xfconf-query -c xsettings -p /Gtk/FontName

If that can't run either, edit the files manually(I find it highly unlikely that these don't exist, please say so if they don't):
~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xsettings.xml:

<channel name="xsettings" version="1.0">
  <property name="Gtk" type="empty">
    <property name="FontName" type="string" value="FontName FontSize"/> <!--Insert something sensible here, like "Sans 10" -->
  </property>
</channel>

If that doesn't do it, I assumed the panel would follow the Gtk theme, but perhaps it doesn't. What about this?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xf … t_settings

Regarding the error, I have literally no experience with Xlib so I'm afraid I can't help you solve it that way.

Edit: automatic url-tags don't like me.

Last edited by Steef435 (2013-09-08 19:04:02)