Arch Linux

mwigzell

Member

Registered: 2016-01-29

Posts: 38

[SOLVED] Can't move or resize window, terminal won't take input focus

Hi, I was attempting to install nordvpn-bin after first installing openvpn and firewalld. As I tried to connect for the first time to the vpn service, I got an error that some /run ...sock was not able to be opened, and the troubleshooting said to add the group "nordvpn" and my account to it, then reboot. Well unthinkingly I rebooted, I should probably have punched the vpn hole in the firewall first. So when graphical mode started up, I found the above symptoms, looks like window manager not running, and the firewalld was logging like crazy as the vpn port was not punched.
If I do a switch user and login with a different account, all is fine.
I of course brought down the firewall and the nordvpn daemon to no avail. problem remains.
Restarting just the nordvpn daemon, problem still there, but I can connect to the vpn! All that works fine.
So in the .xsession-errors I see:

...
xfsettingsd: No window manager registered on screen 0.
...

The same complaint is being made by xfce4-panel. I'm thinking, this issue seems clearly related to no window manager. But how to debug further? I'm aware that X is communicating via the DISPLAY which is some kind of a socket network access right? So somehow installing and failing with "nordvpn" I have managed to bork just my own account's X Window Manager? I notice that
1) If I open an X Terminal from the panel, I CAN move it but not resize. Also the resize markers don't appear, though they do for the windows that I can't move.
2) I can't input to the X Terminal unless I switch account to other user and back. Then the terminal allows me to enter input. If I echo $DISPLAY then I see "DISPLAY=:0.0" which is normal, I don't think issue is from not having DISPLAY variable set.
3) I just tried "xfwm4 --replace" from the terminal (after switching to other account and back), and it came up with no errors, and took over, allowing me to move and resize windows. So issue seems to be that the startup is/was blocking xfwm4 from starting. So now I have tried to reboot and LO! everything is working fine. It seems like starting the xfwm4 by hand was enough to cause it to be re-started properly on next boot? Weird but very happy to be "out of the woods". Any comment on this strange experience welcome, I'll leave it open in case someone knows what causes this.

Last edited by mwigzell (2021-03-05 02:32:50)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,343

Re: [SOLVED] Can't move or resize window, terminal won't take input focus

From the general symptoms it sounds like xorg started before your graphics device was ready which can and can't happen on every boot, but can be alleviated with https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ke … _KMS_start