Arch Linux

Kin2InuYasha

Member

Registered: 2011-10-29

Posts: 9

[SOLVED] XFCE4 Desktop not displaying properly.

Hello,

I've just recently installed Arch on my laptop, and installed XFCE4 as my Desktop Environment. When I start the machine and login, I enter

startxfce4

  When XFCE starts,  the background flickers terribly and I can just make out the little mouse in the back. Then the screen goes black. The cursor is enabled and I can use it but there's nothing to click on. Ctrl+Alt+Backspace doesn't work.

startx

works, and I can start XFCE from within and it shows up normally. However, when I move my cursor from the console of X to the desktop on XFCE it begins flickering again and the output on the X console is

(xfce4-settings-helper:911): xfce4-settings-helper-WARNING **: Failed to get the _NET_NUMBER_OF_DESKTOPS property.
xfce4-panel-Message: no valid position defined: (null)
xfdesktop: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: g_datalist_get_data
xfdesktop[914] starting up 
xfdesktop: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: g_datalist_get_data
xfdesktop[917] starting up  
xfdesktop: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: g_datalist_get_data
xfdesktop[919] starting up   

Then it finally gives up and xfce shuts down.

I've googled and browsed the forums until my eyes hurt and I can't find a solution for my specific problem.
Any help is much appreciated. Thank you for reading.

-Kin

Last edited by Kin2InuYasha (2011-11-01 04:29:06)

Kin2InuYasha

Member

Registered: 2011-10-29

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE4 Desktop not displaying properly.

Antbody? Am I in the right section?

SternGerlachExperiment

Member

Registered: 2009-10-11

Posts: 51

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE4 Desktop not displaying properly.

I've just recently installed Arch on my laptop

Well this is just a thought, but how recently? Is your system up-to-date?

You could try
$pacman -Syu
to make sure.

What video driver are you using?

Kin2InuYasha

Member

Registered: 2011-10-29

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE4 Desktop not displaying properly.

I installed it last night and I've already run pacman -Syu and everything is up to date as far as I can tell. I use the xf86-video-ati driver. Thank you for responding.

tyo

Member

From: Leipzig, Germany

Registered: 2011-10-29

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE4 Desktop not displaying properly.

I just had the same problem. I installed arch freshly from the latest .iso, then installed X and xfce, but didn't update the system. For me, the error resolved with a simple system update.

Might have something to do with this:
LinuxQuestions: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgtk-x11.2.0.so.0: undefined symbol:...

Kin2InuYasha

Member

Registered: 2011-10-29

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE4 Desktop not displaying properly.

I did pacman -Sy and -Syu and it downloaded a couple of updates. One was xfce4-notifyd-0.2.2-2-x86_64 and the other was tzdata-2011m-2-x86_64. Neither seemed to change the situation. The solution to this:

Might have something to do with this:
LinuxQuestions: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgtk-x11.2.0.so.0: undefined symbol:...

was to delete libgobject-2.0 found in /usr/local/lib. I did not find them in that directory, but I did find them in /usr/lib. I deleted those files and now xfce doesn't start at all. I'm kind of in a rut. Thanks to everyone trying to help.

tyo

Member

From: Leipzig, Germany

Registered: 2011-10-29

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE4 Desktop not displaying properly.

Maybe it wasn't just the update that did it for me. I did reinstall X, reinstall xfce. What I did next was to delete most of the config files in my home directory:

rm -R .gconf .gnome2 .config/xfce4 .config/xfce4-session .cache

Then xfce started up. Maybe it helps... :-/

Kin2InuYasha

Member

Registered: 2011-10-29

Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE4 Desktop not displaying properly.

I don't know if it matters now, but I'd like to post my solution in case anyone else comes across this problem.

You were pretty much correct Tyo. I did pacman -Syu before and after the installation of xfce, but my problem was after the installation there was a file at /etc/profile.d/locale.sh that was causing a conflict and not allowing the system to update at all. I never noticed it and when it went back to the cursor so fast I automatically assumed everything was up to date and it had nothing to do. I removed the locale.sh file, ran pacman -Syu, and everything updated as it should and xfce works flawlessly now.

Well, you know what they say about assuming...
Thanks a lot guys.
-Kin

karol

Archivist

Registered: 2009-05-06

Posts: 25,440

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE4 Desktop not displaying properly.

Just to make it complete, I'm posting the news item http://www.archlinux.org/news/initscrip … -required/ that warns users about the need of manual intervention.