F12 XFCE no desktop after update

meine · #1 6th March 2010, 11:58 AM

last night I updated F12 XFCE on my Acer Aspire One 8Gb SSD, there were about 140+ issues to update.

after reboot the dialog to select a user and login appeared, continuing nothing shows up -- no menu, no taskbar, no volumes, just the beautiful F12 background.

pressing ALT - F2 I am able to start commands, eg Thunar shows up displaying all volumes, files and even NFS remote drives. my conclusion is that everything works except the desktop...

anyone how I can start the XFCE desktop environment so I can use the GUI?

thanks, Meine

ozjd · #2 6th March 2010, 12:15 PM

You can run xfce-panel and the panel will reappear. Not sure about the rest. I have only seen the panel disappear. It was due to saving the session and it not saving correctly. You could try and remove / rename .config/xfce4 folder in your home directory.

After reinstating what is missing disable session saving.

PabloTwo · #3 7th March 2010, 12:54 AM

You could try,

Code:

/usr/bin/startxfce4

from the command line. Maybe it will tell you it is already running (?).

meine · #4 7th March 2010, 11:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PabloTwo

/usr/bin/startxfce4
from the command line.

indeed it runs

Code:

/usr/bin/startxfce4: X server already running on display :0.0

tried several other hints you gave:

xfce-panel in terminal or run-dialog (alt-F2) fails, file or folder does not exist (maybe I'm doing something wrong here...)

renamed ~/.config/xfce4 and rebooted but all stays the same
however I browsed the folder ~/.config/xfce4/ and found several xml files for keyboad shortcuts and sessions panel display. I didn't find anything obvious that hinders desktop and panel display though...

in the mean time I learn a lot more about how Fedora works, unfortunately that's not the subject ;-)

Nokia · #5 7th March 2010, 12:02 PM

Try

Code:

su -
yum update --enablerepo=u*g

meine · #6 8th March 2010, 07:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nokia

Try yum update --enablerepo=u*g

updated last night and rebooted. all the same, no desktop...

PabloTwo · #7 8th March 2010, 07:25 PM

You could change to root, create a new user account, log out, log in as the new user and see if you have a proper (xfce4 default) desktop environment for the new user. If you do, then there is something messed up with configuration files for your current user. If you have the same problem with the new user account, then the problem runs much deeper and maybe it's time to consider backing up your data and doing a fresh (re)install.

Just noticed this:

Quote:

xfce-panel in terminal or run-dialog (alt-F2) fails, file or folder does not exist (maybe I'm doing something wrong here...)

The command is:

Code:

/usr/bin/xfce4-panel

Nokia · #8 8th March 2010, 08:08 PM

I'm not sure if a reinstall is really needed at this point. A few more hardware specs, kernel info and logs (messages,Xorg.0.log,dmesg) would be a good start.

PabloTwo As I'm not a XFCE user (although I think I'm gonna install it soon enough

), could you please provide the correct info for meine to do

Code:

init 3
# Log in as root
mv -v ~/.<XFCE-config-folder> ~/.<XFCE-config-folder-old> 
init 5

and try to log in again ?

PabloTwo · #9 8th March 2010, 08:22 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Nokia

PabloTwo As I'm not a XFCE user (although I think I'm gonna install it soon enough ), could you please provide the correct info for meine to do
Code:

init 3
# Log in as root
mv -v ~/.<XFCE-config-folder> ~/.<XFCE-config-folder-old>
init 5

and try to log in again ?

Yeah, that would be (no need to be root here unless some file(s) ended up being owned by root, just log in as regular user):

Code:

mv -v ~/.config/xfce4 ~/.config/xfce4-old

There is also a "~/.config/xfce4-session" folder (directory), but on my system that folder is empty.

Nokia · #10 8th March 2010, 08:48 PM

Thanks Pablo.

PabloTwo · #11 8th March 2010, 08:57 PM

By the way.....

If you change to root then do "mv ~/.config/xfce4...blah blah",

you will be renameing the .config/xfce4 folder in the roots home directory, not the regular user. So it you change to root to do that, then specify the full path:

mv /home/username/.config/xfce4 /home/username/.config/xfce4-old

Code:

BASH:~/-> su
Password: 
BASH:paulm/-> echo ~/
/root/

Nokia · #12 8th March 2010, 09:02 PM

That why I said #Log in as root in the first place and not suggested su -
Well, at least now it's crystal clear.

meine · #13 8th March 2010, 09:04 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PabloTwo

The command is: /usr/bin/xfce4-panel

well, this solved the problem for the greater part.

the panel just showed up and stays after reboot. only now the desktop icons for drives and home folder and right-click desktop-menu are absent but with the GUI working I'm able to sort that out (at least I think...)

fortunately a reinstall isn't necessary also because all the other parts worked just fine. just somewhere in the update process a switch was set off and thanks to you I was able to find it and flip it back.

all thank you Very Much wanting to help out and solve my troubles in about 24 hours!

I really like this Linux world (at least this forum but I guess it's rather structural) because of your cooperative minds, different solutions to try. GREAT!

Meine

PabloTwo · #14 8th March 2010, 10:16 PM

meine, if you can't get to your desktop settings from what you have right now, then just run

Code:

xfdesktop-settings

from a terminal, then click on the Menu tab. There, you can configure a lot of the "missing" items.

pplu · #15 2nd December 2010, 07:13 PM

Hi,

this happened to me too, and this other solved it

yum install switchdesk

switchdesk xfce

Hope this helps another people