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#1 2007-10-15 23:37:10

fianella
Member
Registered: 2007-10-15
Posts: 8

[SOLVED] xfce4 mystery

Hi

I'm a newbie to Arch, but not to xfce. Xfce4 was installed as indicated in the wiki with everything and the 'goodies' too. Problems:

1) There does not appear to be any window manager in effect. All my windows are borderless and have no buttons.

2) Right clicking on the desktop brings up the menu. The first entry in the menu, 'Desktop Menu' is grayed out.

3) Click desktop > settings > settings manager > {window manager or window manager tweaks} a dialog box pops up saying: 'These settings cannot work with your current window manager (Unknown)'

Until now, I have always built Xfce from source so perhaps there is a package I am missing or something? Any help is appreciated.

Thank you

Last edited by fianella (2007-10-16 01:18:55)

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#2 2007-10-15 23:41:23

nj
Member
Registered: 2007-04-06
Posts: 93

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 mystery

How are you running xfce? I have 'exec xfce4-session' in my .xinitrc and run 'startx'.

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#3 2007-10-15 23:44:12

fianella
Member
Registered: 2007-10-15
Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 mystery

I tried it 2 ways.

1) startxfce4
2) copied /etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc  > ~/xinitrc.  Then startx

Thanks

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#4 2007-10-16 00:03:23

nj
Member
Registered: 2007-04-06
Posts: 93

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 mystery

While in xfce, run 'ps ax | grep xf' to see what xfce processes are running. Maybe xfce-mcs-manager isn't running?

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#5 2007-10-16 00:44:09

fianella
Member
Registered: 2007-10-15
Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 mystery

it appears to be running.

[root@workstation ~]# ps ax | grep xf
3010 tty1     S      0:00 xfce4-session
3013 ?        Ss     0:00 xfce-mcs-manager
3015 tty1     Sl     0:01 xfdesktop --sm-client-id 109061a294000119248306200000
3027 tty1     S      0:00 xfce4-panel --sm-client-id 109061a2940001192483061000
3028 tty1     S      0:00 /usr/lib/xfce4/xfce4/panel-plugins/xfce4-menu-plugin
3090 pts/0   R+    0:00 grep xf

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#6 2007-10-16 01:12:49

nj
Member
Registered: 2007-04-06
Posts: 93

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 mystery

Ok, the problem is that xfwm4 is not running. xfwm4 is in the xfce4 group, so it should have been installed. Try running xfwm4 in an xterm to see if it gives any errors.

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#7 2007-10-16 01:24:05

fianella
Member
Registered: 2007-10-15
Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 mystery

That's exactly it! Question is why was it not configured to start when xfce et al loads, and what is the preferred way to to that? And thank you for your help.

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#8 2007-10-16 02:15:22

nj
Member
Registered: 2007-04-06
Posts: 93

Re: [SOLVED] xfce4 mystery

When you exit xfce, make sure the checkbox to save your session is checked. Hopefully that will start xfwm4 the next time you start xfce.

I'm not sure why it did not start up by default. If you feel like trying to debug it, you can backup and delete the folders:

~/.cache/sessions/
~/.cache/xfce4/
~/.config/xfce4/
~/.config/xfce4-session/
~/.config/autostart/

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