Arch Linux

pol343

Member

Registered: 2006-08-29

Posts: 4

Xfce 4.4 - black or no desktop at all after logout

I have this quite annoying problem with my xfce - after logout starting xfce takes more time and when it finishes I see black screen without icons and wallpaper, but panel, taskbar  are loaded correctly.  checking 'Allow xfce to manage your desktop' option brings no result - I noticed that deleting .cache and .config helps...but not always. Could U help me?

ebbot

Member

Registered: 2007-04-11

Posts: 8

Re: Xfce 4.4 - black or no desktop at all after logout

Does the command xfdesktop help?

pol343

Member

Registered: 2006-08-29

Posts: 4

Re: Xfce 4.4 - black or no desktop at all after logout

after some time it does..but you have to wait

Dieter@be

Forum Fellow

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-11-05

Posts: 2,001

Website

Re: Xfce 4.4 - black or no desktop at all after logout

I also had this problem once.. turned out that the xfdesktop settings had changed to "show no icons" combined with "no wallpaper" (defaults to color black afaik)

---

< Daenyth> and he works prolifically
4 8 15 16 23 42

ebbot

Member

Registered: 2007-04-11

Posts: 8

Re: Xfce 4.4 - black or no desktop at all after logout

Check the settings Dieter@be talked about and see if that works (restart x). Otherwise try opening up a terminal and run xfdesktop. Restart X without closing the terminal. That has worked for me in the past. I still don't know what causes it...

pol343

Member

Registered: 2006-08-29

Posts: 4

Re: Xfce 4.4 - black or no desktop at all after logout

nothing helps...it's more funny after an update...now there's no possibility to have desktop managed correctly - after turning it on in settings I have black screen - no logout no reboot helps what's even more menus are broken - the same situation like here:http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=31831....any ideas?

bsdson.tw

Member

From: Taiwan

Registered: 2005-05-06

Posts: 161

Re: Xfce 4.4 - black or no desktop at all after logout

the path to startxfce4 is changed

I've got a similar problem while I "startx"
and "startx" goes to execute "~/.xinitrc"
and my ".xinitrc" goes to execute "/opt/..../startxfce4"
and then it fails!

check it out,
hope this helps.

benmorgan

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2006-07-28

Posts: 67

Re: Xfce 4.4 - black or no desktop at all after logout

Yes, I am having this problem as well. I guess its kinda granted since I am using xfce4-svn. However, I don't think it should be like this ... duh. Xfce starts, kinda takes a whole bunch longer loading. Since I use slim, it gives me slim background, and loads panel, but no xfdesktop and no 'official' menu. After a while... variable amount of time, usually 5 minutes---the xfdesktop suddenly starts, and I cannot figure out what the problem is. Fresh install so I don't think it is going to /opt/.../startxfce4
If anyone has any ideas it would be greatly appreciated!

kjs

Member

Registered: 2005-08-21

Posts: 15

Re: Xfce 4.4 - black or no desktop at all after logout

I don't know if this issue is related or not, but I'll post it. I'm running a fresh install of "duke" with xfce4
everything was working well. I wanted my desktop icons to remain in a certain order (I didn't want the mounted cd-rom icon at the top of the screen.) so, I went into the xfce settings manager thinking that there would be a setting under desktop preferences. Well I played with the desktop icons drop down menu and now I get this when I try to start xfdesktop:

(xfdesktop:5747): Pango-WARNING **: shape engine failure, expect ugly output. the offending font is 'Bitstream Vera Sans Not-Rotated 0'
Segmentation fault

I'm not sure where to begin. I've already tried updating pango, gtk, and my bitstream fonts.

______________________________________________

UPDATE
______________________________________________

removing: ttf-bitstream-vera & ttf-freefonts brings back xfdesktop, but it looks crappy.

Last edited by kjs (2007-05-20 23:14:11)

benmorgan

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2006-07-28

Posts: 67

Re: Xfce 4.4 - black or no desktop at all after logout

So, this I have found in another forum topic: you need to have the "network" daemon started. Once it is started, then I had no problems. My KDE session was crashing as well without it, maybe adding it will help there too; don't know yet. Adding it causes at least xfce4-svn to work fine for me. So I am happy. Hope it works for all of you. Here is a list of the daemons I had started before and after it started working.

BEFORE: (syslog-ng ipw3945d alsa dbus hal fam wifi-radar ifplugd netfs crond)

AFTER: (syslog-ng ipw3945d alsa dbus hal fam wifi-radar ifplugd network netfs crond)

Good luck to everyone, Xfce is a great desktop

Last edited by benmorgan (2007-05-24 16:53:33)