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AquaSZS

Member

Registered: 2016-06-26

Posts: 23

[SOLVED] MATE desktop environment barely usable with latest update

I have used MATE for years without any problem so far, but after running a pacman -Syu today, the DE became very broken.
* Window manager's keyboard shortcuts (e.g. alt+tab) are all unresponsive
* The title bars (on top of all windows) are gone.
* Considerable delay before first window becomes usable, some random delays during usage as well

The seems to be an update to the DE and its window manager Marco on 2019-09-20. Oddly, downgrading the system to that date did not fix the DE. I have tried deleting all the MATE-related configuration files and reinstalling to no avail. This makes me suspect there is something broken with the package.

The most frustrating part about all this is that I have no idea which logs will help me pin down the bug.

journalctl only has one mate related warning and no error:

WARNING: Unable to find provider '' of required component 'dock'

Only other relevant log I could think of was .xsession-errors.old

Failed to run gnome-keyring-daemon: Failed to execute child process “gnome-keyring-daemon” (No such file or directory)
mate-session[10381]: WARNING: Unable to find provider '' of required component 'dock'

** (mate-settings-daemon:10424): WARNING **: 15:24:39.346: Could not open RFKILL control device, please verify your installation

(caja:10448): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:24:39.626: Failed to register client: GDBus.Error:org.gnome.SessionManager.AlreadyRegistered: Unable to register client

** (mate-settings-daemon:10424): WARNING **: 15:24:39.729: Could not execute xrdb -merge -quiet: Failed to execute child process “xrdb” (No such file or directory)

** (caja:10448): WARNING **: 15:24:39.840: Can not calculate _NET_NUMBER_OF_DESKTOPS

** (caja:10448): WARNING **: 15:24:39.840: Can not calculate _NET_NUMBER_OF_DESKTOPS

** (caja:10448): WARNING **: 15:24:39.840: Can not get _NET_WORKAREA

** (caja:10448): WARNING **: 15:24:39.840: Can not determine workarea, guessing at layout

Last edited by AquaSZS (2019-09-25 03:57:39)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,746

Re: [SOLVED] MATE desktop environment barely usable with latest update

journalctl only has

system or session journal?
Also look at coredumpctl and check whether a "marco" process is running and if not, try to launch one (don't forget to "export DISPLAY=:0" if you want to do this outside the GUI session ie. from a TTY or via ssh)

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

AquaSZS

Member

Registered: 2016-06-26

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] MATE desktop environment barely usable with latest update

I just ran

journalctl -b 0

(I believe that's system-wide log?) and looked for related entries.

Thanks for the tip about checking if marco is running at all. Very curiously, marco is NOT running when the DE starts. Running

marco --replace

after the DE starts fixes the issues.

I am now very confused as to why marco would not start, even after a clean reinstall.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,746

Re: [SOLVED] MATE desktop environment barely usable with latest update

journalctl can only access the system log when you're root or in either the "systemd-journal", "adm", or "wheel" group.
I'd check again as well as the core dumps to see whether the initial instance of the WM crashes.

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

AquaSZS

Member

Registered: 2016-06-26

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] MATE desktop environment barely usable with latest update

Even as root, there is no marco anywhere in logs or core dumps. I was logged in with wheel group anyway though.

I found an old issue opened on github that resembles my problem. The issue seems to be user-specific, so I tried creating a new user. The DE does start with marco properly with the new user.

What are some user-specific files that I should investigate?

AquaSZS

Member

Registered: 2016-06-26

Posts: 23

Re: [SOLVED] MATE desktop environment barely usable with latest update

Turns out the problem is at the most unexpected location: ~/.local/share/applications/marco.desktop

The key was getting the xsession to give more helpful logs as described in this related issue with mate-session-manager.

Last edited by AquaSZS (2019-09-25 04:13:42)