xfce4 is broken

Birdman · 2006-03-29 21:23:39

Following a recent upgrade to xorg7 xfce4 has fallen into decline. After a fresh boot xfce4 loads, but without the panel. A right click for the menus works but any of the xfce4 "Settings" options eg. Display, do not work. If I exit and `rm -R .cache` and then start xfce4 again I get no menus. Next time I only get a partial backdrop. Get the picture? A declining situtation.

I have tried

pacman -Scc
pacman -Rn xfce4
pacman -Rn xfce-goodies
pacman -S xfce4
pacman -S xfce-goodies

I have loaded xfce4 from init 3 with startxfce4 and I have also done the same from kdm.

There is clearly a dodgy file somewhere that I need to get rid of - but which one :?:

There is a similar pattern if I use my wife's login, so it appears to be a system wide issue rather than a user issue.

Any insight would be appreciated.

BTW: KDE works fine and I have just installed Fluxbox as a stop gap - not used flux for several years

pressh · 2006-03-29 21:32:24

I only once tried xfce4 with xorg7....i too got that problem, it was a missing dep in my case (some xorg dep), don't remember which one it was though

polarrr · 2006-03-29 22:23:31

Try removing or renaming .config folder in the home directory. It'll reset your setup to default. I had that problem, too, and that worked for me. I had to re-do my own setup afterward, but at least it fixed the problem. Worth a shot.

ozar · 2006-03-29 22:38:21

I took the fresh install approach rather than the upgrade path and xfce4 is working fine here. I'm thinking that the suggestion by polarrr is probably your best bet for a quick fix.

Birdman · 2006-03-29 22:40:53

polarr - Good suggestion, I had only focused on the ~/.cache. However it didn't work A shame that pressh can't remember which dep was missing. Very helpfull nonetheless. I at least have another path to follow.

Thanks.

Birdman · 2006-03-29 22:45:17

ozar wrote:

I took the fresh install approach rather than the upgrade path and xfce4 is working fine here. I'm thinking that the suggestion by polarrr is probably your best bet for a quick fix.

ozar, an overlap of postings there I have another thread running on my wows with the upgrade to xorg7. Having got this far, and more knowledgible for it, I am going to get this sorted. I think you have just confirmed to me that the issue I am having is very much xorg7 related. I can't be too far away from a solution now

tomk · 2006-03-29 22:48:08

Birdman wrote:

After a fresh boot xfce4 loads, but without the panel.

Open a terminal, enter

xfce4-panel

and post any errors.

Birdman wrote:

If I exit and `rm -R .cache` and then start xfce4 again I get no menus.

Enter

xfdesktop -menu

and post any errors.

Apart from an Xauth issue when xorg7 was still in testing, the upgrade caused no xfce4 problems for me. Hopefully, you'll get some useful error messages.

Birdman · 2006-03-30 09:31:27

tomk,

xfce4-panel does bring up the panel, but the "settings" button does not function. It will let me change work space though.

I have looked in the /var/log/ files and cannot find any messages. There is nothing output to the shell when I launch the panel.

I think there is still something missing on the xorg front :?

tomk · 2006-03-30 10:06:44

Did you try the menu command?

Birdman · 2006-03-30 10:54:10

tomk wrote:

Did you try the menu command?

Yes. The menu was actually working, ie appeared with a right click. However, I typed it into a shell anyhow and the menu popped up on the screen. No error messages but the "Settings" related menu items would not work.

Birdman · 2006-03-30 11:17:23

A bit more info:

I have launched the panel from the shell and then added some plugins. They all work fine. I can launch apps eg OOo. It is the "settings" that are crippled eg. it is a challenge typing this on a US keyboard and the screen res and fonts are horrid.

Just done a bit more digging. Taken a look at /opt/xfce4/etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc and discovered that xfce4 is not being launched by xfce4-session. Now I have no idea whether this is different from before but note that if the above method is not used that the component parts are launched separately eg the panel.

Not sure what to do with this information - but I'm sure there is someone that does

elasticdog · 2006-03-30 20:26:31

I vaguely remember having problems with the settings dialogs when running Xfce, similar to yourself, and I think it ended up being the wrong file permissions. Hmmm, hold on...

Okay, here's the original thread: Xfce4 Can't Start File Manager or Settings w/Non-Super User, but is looks like all I did to solve it was remove the <code>~/.config</code> and <code>~/config</code> directories and then started things up again. Perhaps something in there will help ya...the last post has most of the details about what was going on.

tomk · 2006-03-30 21:08:42

Birdman - in your original post, you said there were certain conditions under which the menu failed, and I understood that these conditions were repeatable. I thought you might be able to set it up again so that the menu failed on right-click, and then try the desktop -menu command. If right-click is working, the command will tell us nothing.

Birdman · 2006-03-30 22:19:36

tomk wrote:

Birdman - in your original post, you said there were certain conditions under which the menu failed, and I understood that these conditions were repeatable. I thought you might be able to set it up again so that the menu failed on right-click, and then try the desktop -menu command. If right-click is working, the command will tell us nothing.

OK. Just loaded xfce4 from kdm - no panel and no menus. This is actually odd as this is the first instance for this boot session, menus are usually there for the first few logins and then vanish.

Alt-F2 "Terminal" to allow me to launch the panel - fine.
Launching the menus throws out:

*** attempt to put segment in horiz list twice

Then this is listed several times down the screen.

I then used the menus to launch firefox and got the following:
:

/opt/mozilla/lib/firefox/firefox-bin: error while loading shared libraries: libmozjs.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

This was then listed several times down the screen.

(Gecko:3767): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_get_from_drawable: assertion `gdk_window_is_viewable (src)' failed

Firefox successfully launched from the panel.
I hope this sheds some light.

Thanks.

neri · 2006-04-02 20:22:34

The new glibc triggers an error in the wetaher plugin. Remove it from your panel (eg. by editing the file ~/.config/xfce4/panel/contents.xml)

I hope this will be fixed in upstrem soonish.

-neri

Birdman · 2006-04-02 21:43:07

neri wrote:

The new glibc triggers an error in the wetaher plugin. Remove it from your panel (eg. by editing the file ~/.config/xfce4/panel/contents.xml)
I hope this will be fixed in upstrem soonish.
-neri

I followed your instructions but unfortunately it has not changed anything xfce4 loads without the panel. I loaded the panel manually from a shell, and sure enough the panel came up without the weather plugin (I must have therefore got it right ).

seelk · 2006-04-02 22:07:50

I'm experiencing the same issue with xfce4-panel not starting. Below is the error I get:

$ xfce4-panel 
*** glibc detected *** free(): invalid pointer: 0x08367550 ***
Aborted

AndyRTR · 2006-04-02 22:46:45

same here on arch64 and my arch32 laptop.

AndyRTR · 2006-04-02 23:50:13

rolling back to last archck 2.6.15 kernel and nvidia pkg -15 helped to solve it.

EDIT: no. it keeps crashing.

T-Dawg · 2006-04-06 01:51:16

neri wrote:

The new glibc triggers an error in the wetaher plugin. Remove it from your panel (eg. by editing the file ~/.config/xfce4/panel/contents.xml)
I hope this will be fixed in upstrem soonish.
-neri

thanks neri, now I don't have to murder someone with an axe.

Birdman · 2006-04-17 11:09:36

I never did solve my broken xfce4 problem. I have been rotating different WMs over the past few weeks - it does no harm to retry stuff you haven't used for a while Anyhow, to assist in solving a different problem I set-up a new user account to experiment with and interestingly xfce4 has the same problems. It therefore looks like the problems I am having are not user based but system based. I can only assume that I have a unique package installation that somehow has gone off the rails on my last update. I just find it very curious that I appear to be the only one with this problem.

I will wait for the next xfce4 update and hope that does the trick

enderst · 2006-05-02 01:28:29

after the weather plugin group is deleted from contents.xml delete .cache/xfce4/weather-plugin. probly should be logged out of xfce during this.

T-Dawg · 2006-06-15 10:03:30

I just tried re-enabling weather plugin again and the panel didn't work, again. Removed the offending lines in contents.xml and it still doesn't work. Removed .config/xfce4 and .cache/xfce4, still no go. Tried to untar my back up to replace the files and got filesystem/kernel/something weird errors. Now I'm stuck with a DE/WM that I don't like for the rest of my life, Yay!!
Lets all celebrate upstream developers who don't fix age old problems! Woot!!
o/

neri · 2006-06-15 15:11:36

Penguin wrote:

I just tried re-enabling weather plugin again and the panel didn't work, again. Removed the offending lines in contents.xml and it still doesn't work. Removed .config/xfce4 and .cache/xfce4, still no go. Tried to untar my back up to replace the files and got filesystem/kernel/something weird errors. Now I'm stuck with a DE/WM that I don't like for the rest of my life, Yay!!
Lets all celebrate upstream developers who don't fix age old problems! Woot!!
o/

The upstream devs are very busy to get 4.4. rolling and for whatever reason your xfce4 is not working, you're the only one with the issue. So, may be we should start checking which packages on your system are not standard?

-neri

PS: I have issues with weather plugin in 4.4beta too

T-Dawg · 2006-06-15 20:48:39

The only thing not standard on my system are packages from AUR and the testing kernel, xfce4 is all from extra:
qpkg
jgnash
xarchive
frostwire
aurbuild
gaim-svn
pycman
grub-gfx
foff
python-cpio
pylzma
libcfl
pymedia
google-earth

Arch Linux

#1 2006-03-29 21:23:39

xfce4 is broken

#2 2006-03-29 21:32:24

Re: xfce4 is broken

#3 2006-03-29 22:23:31

Re: xfce4 is broken

#4 2006-03-29 22:38:21

Re: xfce4 is broken

#5 2006-03-29 22:40:53

Re: xfce4 is broken

#6 2006-03-29 22:45:17

Re: xfce4 is broken

#7 2006-03-29 22:48:08

Re: xfce4 is broken

#8 2006-03-30 09:31:27

Re: xfce4 is broken

#9 2006-03-30 10:06:44

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#10 2006-03-30 10:54:10

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#11 2006-03-30 11:17:23

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#12 2006-03-30 20:26:31

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#13 2006-03-30 21:08:42

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#14 2006-03-30 22:19:36

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#15 2006-04-02 20:22:34

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#16 2006-04-02 21:43:07

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#18 2006-04-02 22:46:45

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#19 2006-04-02 23:50:13

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#20 2006-04-06 01:51:16

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#21 2006-04-17 11:09:36

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#22 2006-05-02 01:28:29

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#23 2006-06-15 10:03:30

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#24 2006-06-15 15:11:36

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#25 2006-06-15 20:48:39

Re: xfce4 is broken

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