xfce4 woes (partly FIXED)

Fred Krogh · Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 6:16 pm Post subject: xfce4 woes (partly FIXED)

Minor problem: If I use the menu to logout, Restart and Shut Down are grayed out. The big problem is that my desktop is not saved. If I go to Sessions and Startup in the Setup menu, and then go to Session. From there I can Clear saved session. That will clear all but ~/.cache/sessions/thumbs-mon1:0 which is a directory containing a .pmg file. If I then click on Save Sesson, there is a little flicker on the screen, but no evidence of anything being saved. When I log out and save the session, then this directory will have another entry like xfwm4-299eb6e86-664e-4780-9dfe-54c84648a8b3.state. But that apparently does me no good. Probably because I have this error in ~/.xsession-errors

derk · Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 7:40 pm Post subject:

mine works

i am using policykit and upower also i have gnome and kde support disabled .. on ~amd64 w/ slim as login manager

in the saved session directory there are the following files, directories:
thumbs-zlink1:0/ (directory)
xfce4-session-zlink1:0
xfce4-session-zlink1:0.bak
xfwm4-2f8280eb5-68ed-44fd-9633-f1232bfa9673.state

I'm also using xfce4-session-9999 from the xfce-dev overlay w/o the " xfce4-session-4.10.1-alock_support_to_xflock4.patch " ..All patches commented out in the ebuild .. but this should match the released xfce4-session-4.12.0-tar.bz2 .. except for a few minor updates ..

I've always had working session saves even when not using policykit or upower in the past ..

anything unusual in your install?

Fred Krogh · Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 9:01 pm Post subject:

I don't know of anything unusual. I am running xfce4 4.12.0, but the old xfce4 was giving me trouble as well. My use flags for xfce4-session are: nls policykit systemd upower xscreensaver. I have no idea what to look for, but xfce4 has been a bit flaky with respect so saving windows for a long time. Etc. for not having a working restart from the logout menu.

Fred Krogh · Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 9:10 pm Post subject:

Thinking more about your data, I located a /root/.cache/sessions/xfce4-session-mon1:0 and copied it into ~/.cache/sessions. Logged out and back. My terminals stayed where they were, a godsend! Logout still won't restart, but having all those terminal windows come back where they were and active in the desired directories takes care the most important part of what has be bothered. Thanks.

derk · Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 9:19 pm Post subject:

mm .. I'm using consolekit2.git version (eric koegel's) which should behave similarly to logind(systemd) ..

are you sure you are actually running systemd as your init system and not openRC with systemd supplying udev only ..

checkout the systemd entry in the gentoo.wiki if needed .. just an oddball guess .. w/o further info

it seems odd that restart etc is grayed .. means that something is not detected or is mis-configured ..
when I briefly tried systemd a few months ago it worked fine with xfce4-session-pre-4.12 (git/development versions)

Fred Krogh · Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 9:25 pm Post subject:

I am using openrc to get started. And sadly I don't know if systemd is doing anything more than supplying udev. Should I not have systemd as a use flag? I have it part of USE in /etc/make.conf.

derk · Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 10:17 pm Post subject:

recompile xfce4-session with -systemd use flag for it alone

i.e. in /etc/portage/package.use have the line : xfce-base/xfce4-session -systemd upower

if you use xfce4-power-manager do the same for it ..

and see what happens .. might work until you switch over to complete systemd then recompile it again with systemd

Fred Krogh · Posted: Tue Mar 10, 2015 10:26 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the thoughts, but that did take of that last little problem.