All panels gone

hi all

i just ran a pacman -Syu update and after the restart my 3 panels are gone lol including now i cant even move open stuff around my desktop and the close and minimise and expand icons in those programs are also gone i only have the left click menu to work with , this has happened before but i restart sorted it out but not this time. i have checked and my panels are still there if i open the panel app they just not displaying. and also the other icons are gone as i mentioned. also if i open the desktop app the backgrounds are gone and folder says none lol iam using the adwaita-dark theme and lightdm is my display manager

lol sorry about the spelling but i cant right click and select the correct spelling as soon as i right click and move the mouse it disapears lol

That doesn’t sound like much fun! I’ve never seen that - and the only xfce update I noticed was to Thunar…

I would be tempted to create a new user, and see if that user works OK - then comparos of config files could lead you to a solution…

Also - if you run in the terminal xfce4-settings-manager, perhaps you can see what’s amiss on the panel etc…

Beyond that - let’s wait for experts!

ok sooooooo i opened the manager and clicked on appearance and and desktop apps and this all came up in terminal lol

[angelus@Angelus Desktop]$ xfce4-settings-manager

(xfce4-appearance-settings:15912): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:01:53.224: Content added to the action area of a dialog using header bars

(xfce4-appearance-settings:15912): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:01:53.224: Content added to the action area of a dialog using header bars

(xfdesktop-settings:15939): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:02:13.002: Content added to the action area of a dialog using header bars

(xfdesktop-settings:15939): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:02:13.002: Content added to the action area of a dialog using header bars

(xfdesktop-settings:15939): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 15:02:13.031: invalid (NULL) pointer instance

(xfdesktop-settings:15939): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 15:02:13.032: g_signal_connect_data: assertion ‘G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)’ failed

(xfdesktop-settings:15939): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 15:02:13.032: invalid (NULL) pointer instance

(xfdesktop-settings:15939): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 15:02:13.032: g_signal_connect_data: assertion ‘G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)’ failed

(xfdesktop-settings:15939): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 15:02:13.158: gtk_box_gadget_distribute: assertion ‘size >= 0’ failed in GtkNotebook

but yes i can also recall something or other about thunar

i’m going to restart now i cant type in terminal lol

edit:

so i read that to try remove everything under ~/.cache/sessions/ which i managed to do before the restart … i now have the minismise and close ect of windows back but now it i try open the panel app i get this

image

What errors do you get if launch xfce4-panel in a terminal?

hi there,

it says “there is already a running instance”

i did a seach on the web about that failed to show the prefs dialog error and it was suggested to run

[angelus@Angelus ~]$ panel_debug=1 xfce4-panel

(wrapper-2.0:3021): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: 15:26:21.179: g_file_new_for_path: assertion ‘path != NULL’ failed

(wrapper-2.0:3021): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: 15:26:21.179: g_file_monitor_file: assertion ‘G_IS_FILE (file)’ failed

(wrapper-2.0:3021): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 15:26:21.179: invalid (NULL) pointer instance

(wrapper-2.0:3021): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 15:26:21.179: g_signal_connect_data: assertion ‘G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)’ failed

(wrapper-2.0:3021): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:26:21.179: Attempting to add a widget with type GtkToggleButton to a container of type XfcePanelPlugin, but the widget is already inside a container of type XfcePanelPlugin, please remove the widget from its existing container first.

(wrapper-2.0:3019): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:26:21.271: Negative content width -3 (allocation 1, extents 2x2) while allocating gadget (node button, owner PulseaudioButton)

(wrapper-2.0:3030): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:26:21.283: Negative content width -1 (allocation 1, extents 1x1) while allocating gadget (node button, owner XfceArrowButton)

(wrapper-2.0:3021): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:26:21.305: Negative content width -3 (allocation 1, extents 2x2) while allocating gadget (node button, owner GtkToggleButton)

(wrapper-2.0:3020): Gtk-WARNING **: 15:26:21.318: Negative content width -3 (allocation 1, extents 2x2) while allocating gadget (node button, owner PowerManagerButton)

edit:

after that two panels came up but both are the default panels that came up on a fresh install … so atleast i have that now to work with. erm and now i can open the panel app and also the panel profiles app

but i’m wondering now like what happened :woozy_face:

my first step in debugging such issues is a god old reboot :slight_smile:
at least a logout would be worth a try. see if the problem is an artifact of the upgrade process itself, then take things from there. I guess that’s why Windows forced a restart after program each install or major setting change. Just to cut down on the debugging questions.

yeah i mean last time i just did a restart and all was good but this time wasnt so easy … dont know now how to see what was really going on, now that it seems to be ok.

perhaps i should just do a restart again and see … brb

edit:
ok everything back to normal it seems … i just got to redo my panel layouts … maybe i should change thunar to something else and see what happens in future

I doubt Thunar caused it - it certainly didn’t do anything on the 3 systems I have updated so far. Once you have everything configured how you like it - you might look into backing up your settings somewhere for quicker recoveries!

NB - I think I might have to rethink the ‘don’t blame Thunar’ thing - it looks like another update for it just hit the servers! Can’t track down the changes right now, but it is suggestive…

haha fun times

backing it all up is an awesome idea, i must look how to do that

Some information can be dug up in here:
https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=9133
there may be more/better info elsewhere, but it gives you an idea! :grin:

so i woke up this morning and turned on my pc and found my panels and everything missing again. i restarted a few times and no luck , so then i cleared out the sessions folder and restarted and nothing.
but what i noticed is on booting up or rather when loading the desktop the panels would display and only when the wallpaper came up did it all go away.

lol the next issue though was all me lmao
in an attempt to get the display manager in order again i changed it to lxdm rather then gdm which is what i chose last time. once at the lxdm i was greeted by a login screen lol and in lightdm I’m set to auto login so anyway i tried my passwords and i couldn’t get in lol

luckily i had a live cd of endevour on had and booted into that and dug around trying to find a way to edit and go back or past the lxdm login screen. anyway after some persistence i found a page that suggested that i edit the /etc/lxdm/lxdm.conf file i changed and removed comment from lines

autologin=angelus
session=/usr/bin/startxfce4
skip_password=1

i first changed autologin and that did not work, then joined the autologin with the session and then only after a restart did i get a desktop back lmao

I’m not sure what is causing this issue to come and go.

currently I’m using;
DE: Xfce 4.16
Display Manager: lxdm
WM: Xfwm4

since the change also i changed to the endeavouros default theme and i also went and changed the wallpaper. and i must say i have noticed that it feels alot faster and response is alot faster as well