[Solved] Text is not visible in xfce4-terminal since pacman -Syu

doctor-yellowstar · 2018-09-21 04:49:59

Hello kind strangers,

I'm not sure where to begin with this one. I did a pacman -Syu ("full system upgrade") today and now no text is visible in xfce4-terminal. I can still type and commands still work but I can't see any of it. Yes, I have checked the Appearance tab to make sure the colours are set correctly.

When I run xfce4-terminal I get the following error message.

Failed to connect to session manager: Failed to connect to the session manager: SESSION_MANAGER environment variable not defined

Indeed, running echo $SESSION_MANAGER returns a blank line.

Any help is appreciated, even if it's just a starting point. I didn't find any seemingly results when I searched for SESSION_MANAGER solutions. Can I provide other information?

Output of uname -a:

Linux 4.14.70-1-lts #1 SMP Sat Sep 15 16:47:42 CEST 2018 x86_64 GNU/Linux

Last edited by doctor-yellowstar (2018-09-23 18:32:00)

seth · 2018-09-21 07:09:07

Try from outside an xfce session (ie. isolate the multi-user.target or just do not login to the GUI session and switch to another VTV)

mv ~/.config/xfce4 ~/.config/xfce4.old
mv ~/.config/xfce4-session ~/.config/xfce4-session.old

doctor-yellowstar · 2018-09-22 02:40:32

Great suggestion! Unfortunately, although some of the GUI elements and settings I had modified have reset, everything in the terminal (all the text) is still very black, and launching xfce4-terminal still gives me the same SESSION_MANAGER error.

I've also now tried uninstalling and reinstalling xfce4-terminal (trying both pacman -R and pacman -Rs to remove potentially problematic dependencies? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ ), but no luck there either.

seth · 2018-09-22 06:23:08

"still very black"
Is this a contrast issue? Can you see glyphs at all?

Try to run

printf '\033]10;#272727\007';  printf '\033]11;#fafafa\007'; printf '\033]708;#fafafa\007'

(idk. whether xfce4-terminal handles those escape seqences, but they'd get you a dark on bright terminal)

If the background doesn't change, you could also try

printf '\033]10;#1793D0\007'

for arch-blue text

doctor-yellowstar · 2018-09-22 18:27:39

It's not a contrast issue, no. I should be clear: It is totally black. And I could see it fine before an update.

I tried your commands. The first changes the background and the text white, so now everything just looks totally white. The second command doesn't do anything noticeable.

seth · 2018-09-22 19:32:43

Do other VTEs (xterm, urxvt) work as expected?
What about another libvte3 one, eg. lxterminal?
What's the output of "fc-match monospace"?

To be even more clear: only the xfce4-terminal content is affected? It's menubar (does it have one?) and other (xfce4) applications work fine?

doctor-yellowstar · 2018-09-23 03:23:19

I use ST terminal and it works fine. I just downloaded lxterminal and it does exactly what xfce4-terminal does: all black text on a black background. Interesting.

The output for fc-match monospace on any of my terminal programs is:

DejaVuSansMono.ttf: "DejaVu Sans Mono" "Book"

So, anything that includes libvte3 is affected? I see the packages vte-common and vte3, but all I can think to do is uninstall and reinstalling. Any suggestions?

seth · 2018-09-23 06:33:00

What about other, "regular" GTK3 applications?
You could try to downgrade vte3 and vte-common, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Do … g_packages
You *might* have to downgrade gtk3 with it.

Otherwise switch to another terminal emulator (st is fine) and wait.
At this point it's probably fair to say that the gnome 3.30 release is one giant disaster…

doctor-yellowstar · 2018-09-23 18:31:32

Regular GTK3 apps work fine. It was vte3 and vte-common that was the issue. Using the downgrade utility from the AUR, I downgraded both of these packages from version 54.0+9+gdace9988-1 to 52.2-1 and all is good now!

Thanks for walking me through this, seth. All is good now.

Arch Linux

#1 2018-09-21 04:49:59

[Solved] Text is not visible in xfce4-terminal since pacman -Syu

#2 2018-09-21 07:09:07

Re: [Solved] Text is not visible in xfce4-terminal since pacman -Syu

#3 2018-09-22 02:40:32

Re: [Solved] Text is not visible in xfce4-terminal since pacman -Syu

#4 2018-09-22 06:23:08

Re: [Solved] Text is not visible in xfce4-terminal since pacman -Syu

#5 2018-09-22 18:27:39

Re: [Solved] Text is not visible in xfce4-terminal since pacman -Syu

#6 2018-09-22 19:32:43

Re: [Solved] Text is not visible in xfce4-terminal since pacman -Syu

#7 2018-09-23 03:23:19

Re: [Solved] Text is not visible in xfce4-terminal since pacman -Syu

#8 2018-09-23 06:33:00

Re: [Solved] Text is not visible in xfce4-terminal since pacman -Syu

#9 2018-09-23 18:31:32

Re: [Solved] Text is not visible in xfce4-terminal since pacman -Syu

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