Xfce configs screwed up: unusable [Solved]

[atomick]

Remember those 12hr common days all too much: What you can try and I'll describe 1st then share commands - other wise I'm sensored anything I post.
yes as shared Best Create a new test account. I created test1 and test22 set passwds make it easy. There is or should be a file in the common Xfce4 directory
called xfce-mx-defaults
reading shares delete all "Files" except this file and re-login with xfce-project icons and all same control. the Project files not MX-Default xfce file content
I tried 3 tests.
1: - as described deleted all folders and files except xfce-mx-defaults - xfce4-session-logout , re- login and I have mentioned Xfce-project icons and operations
2: - Deleted all the files logout login same as default install MX-xfce common xfce-desktop icons and file settings.
3: - Deleted all files and copied from /etc/skel/.config/xfce/* . - after cd ~/.config/xfce4
session logout login looks same as standard. Do not worry your other programs etc content are in their own perspective folders. yet worry about your backup this is not 100 percent integrity they will be all there on a restart of each application you open.
all files originate from /etc/skel as each account is created. so these are the key primary files 'the Desktop and Environment common'

Code: Select all

 
test1:
cd ~/.config/xfce4

rm -rf desktop xfwm4 panel xfconf terminal xfce4-taskmanager.rc xfce4-screenshooter help.rc helpers.rc
xfce4-session-logout
#did not delete xfce-mx-defaults
#upon re-login all Xfce-project desktop control and icon standards similar to mx-xfce4
#operates all the same

test2:

cd ~/.config/xfce4
rm -rf *
xfce4-session-logout
login now have Xfce-own-desktop control and icons
xfce4-session-logout / Re login looks same as initial mx install from iso

test3:

cd ~/.config/xfce4
rm -rf *
cp -r /etc/skel/.config/xfce4/* .
xfce4-session-logout / Re login looks same as initial mx install from iso 

Might provide some confidence: you should be able to do this to your messed up account. Cheers.

[m_pav]

1. Where are all the places that Xfce writes its user-related stuff?
2. What is the correct format of said stuff?

You're over-thinking it. All your answers lie on the storage drives you already have in use. Just set Thunar to show the hidden files and you'll see them for yourself, BUT, do it on a fresh user account that has only been used once to log and nothing else.

The first time I saw the Xfce user configuration in the hidden files, I went through each of the hidden directories and looked at what was laid down, it just made sense.

I then compared them to the hidden content in /etc/skel/ and I could see how the first run only really created a series of standard user folders in the chosen language and everything else was just apps and services laying down their default configs.

That is why the process I gave you works to get the standard configs back to the initial state. If an issue persists afterwards, then either the user has done something pretty damaging that goes beyond the standard state files, or there may be corruption on te drive, in which case, you NEED to run a partition check BEFORE you do anything else cause there's no point in scurrying around doing this and that when the underlying structure is already in a fragile state.

If you go back to read what I said in my initial response, you would have avoided making the mistake you made, trying to pull the configs into the damaged users profile, and who knows what damage was inflicted in such a move. The clean base configs have to be written into the damaged users profile from an external point when the damaged profile is NOT active.

[b3ta]

Because she has accounts to do I got it working again without finding out why it happened, but as you'll see in the details below, the solution involved something very unexpected — to me, at least. There was one other piece of strangeness relating to a broken Trash link, but I'll put that in my next post after I re-read the image size limit in the rules

If anyone is interested in me writing up the consolidated steps I took (plus things like why I checked the process table after logging out) in the form of a tutorial, let me know.

You're over-thinking it. All your answers lie on the storage drives you already have in use. Just set Thunar to show the hidden files and you'll see them for yourself, BUT, do it on a fresh user account that has only been used once to log and nothing else.

I hear you, m_pav, but I wanted first to prove that the issue is Xfce-related (all "smartctl" tests and "e2fsck" are fine), which is why I did it this way around (first putting her config in a clean installation). Then I had to go to work, which is why I stopped there.

In the end it was a combination of your suggestion and some extra digging that got her working again, so thank you very much.

Thank you also to everyone else who pitched in to help.

Lastly, out of interest: if a user's home directory has at least one named pipe in it, then the MX User Manager won't delete that user's home directory — it will delete everything except any named pipes and doesn't warn you about it. I had to do a manual "rm -Rf /home/tempuser" as root before I could re-create it.

Some detail

After logging in as USER and having to get back to the login screen via Ctrl+Alt+Backspace, I saw there were a number of processes hanging around.

Code: Select all

root@lonsdale:/home# ps -ef | grep USER | grep -v "grep"
USER      13849       1  0 10:44 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/gpg-agent --sh --daemon
USER      14108       1  0 10:44 ?        00:00:00 compton --dbus --config /home/USER/.config/compton.conf -b
USER      14122       1  0 10:44 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/pipewire
USER      14123       1  0 10:44 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse

root@lonsdale:/home# updatedb

root@lonsdale:/home# locate compton.conf
/home/USER/.config/compton.conf
/home/USER.BROKEN/.config/compton.conf
/usr/share/compton-conf/compton.conf.example
/usr/share/mx-tweak/compton.conf

root@lonsdale:/home# killall -u USER

root@lonsdale:/home# ps -ef | grep USER | grep -v "grep"

root@lonsdale:/home# ls -l /home/USER/.config/compton.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 USER USER 1254 Jun 20  2021 /home/USER/.config/compton.conf

As a test, I logged in as "tempuser" and then out again, and this was the result:

Code: Select all

root@lonsdale:/home/USER# ps -ef | grep tempuser | grep -v grep
tempuser   15129       1  0 10:52 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/pipewire
tempuser   15130       1  0 10:52 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/pipewire-pulse

So, some pipewire processes hang around for some reason, but "tempuser" had no "compton" process (no "gpg-agent" either, but that wasn't configured.

Here's the kicker: she hasn't had Compton configured since installation. So, after I killed all of USER's processes and logged in again, same problem, but if I did the same and also deleted "~USER/.config/compton.conf", then it all worked.

Thing is, that file has not been touched since 2021-06-20, so what changed? Also, her Xfce config directories had important files missing — ones she doesn't even know exist, nor how to get to — and I want to know why, but for now, she can work.

That said, I have a complete backup and week after next I'll see if anyone on the Xfce forum wants to take a look, specifically because of what she explained to me about how shutting down has been taking longer recently. From my perspective some Xfce processes sometimes get out of sync during shut-down, which is why I mentioned serialisation, as every time except once when something similar has happened to me (identical from user experience, but different in solution), it was related to shut-down going awry in some way.

Again, if someone wants me to write up a tutorial on this, let me know.

[b3ta]

OK, so this is spurious, but I said I'd share.

In her "~/Desktop/" there was a ".desktop" file for the Wastebasket. Its name is supposed to be "trash.desktop". Only, it is "trash:⁄.desktop".

What's really weird is that the character after the ":" is not "/" — it is actually "⁄", or U+2044, character 0x2044 in the Unicode character set. Depending on your font they either look the same or slightly different, so that can be hard to catch. of course, no-one has any idea how that happened.

[BitterTruth]

Some detail

Hers was the only user on the machine, so I had to create two new users, as the User Manager would not let me do the copy to the active user (for good reason!).

Since the drive doesn't have enough free space to make a copy of all her files, plus the chances of it being related to a file outside of "~/.*" are tiny, I did the following as root.

Code: Select all

cd /home
mkdir keep
mv USER/* keep/.

While that leave a large amount of unrelated rubbish (Firefox cache files, for example) for the User Manager copy, it is small enough to work, plus it won't miss any of the Xfce files. [Sentence edited for clarity.]

As an aside, after the copy I saw a tree size discrepancy, but that was just the "~/.config/autostart/mx-welcome.desktop" which she had deleted and which the new installation had.

Sadly, logging in as this new user with all my wife's "~/.*" files was no different, hence I really do need answers to questions one and four, above.

Correct me if I'm wrong but it seems to me you did the opposite of what @m_pav suggested you do. The copy should have been FROM the new user TO your wife's account. Instead you copied your wife's configs to the new user and had the same issues with the new user.

This is also why it seems you needed to create 2 new users (instead of the one user m_pav suggested) because it wouldn't let you copy to the ACTIVE new user.

[atomick]

Even though post is Solved : Some lessons to learn and well some knowledge can go long way, also may cause some dangerous effect if not handled used more correct.

- Comment: #13 mention of deleting an tempuser account via "rm -Rf ~/.cache/sessions/*". very dangerous anything ~/.cache can be deleted prior to exit an account for the user logged in.

use sudo userdel -rf "tempuser" - tempuser being the name of account to delete. by doing your command rm -Rf ~/.cache/sessions/* hope your logged in as your wifes user other wise you deleted your own ~ home .cache / sessions content, if you do so on an account rm -Rf /home/Wife/* as root,
this alone will mess up your system by system files inclusive being

/etc - passwd passwd- , shadow shadow- , group group- , subuid subuid- . subgid subgid- gshadow gshadow-

- files just named via ending with dash no biggy these are for cache use, forensics and backup incase. ( my always make copy of any file worked in /etc/ alone )

m_pav was right at 1st to help rebuild the account with assumption your user account on system was doing the user sync in MX-User-manager. and not logged in with same broken account.

Practice with my share as well. I used the xfce-session-logout issue to same as mouse click "Logout" I script lots.

contents of /etc/skel/* are all the base files to create a user account. Yet Directories are not created until the user logs in the 1st time.

Firefox cache files can also be deleted prior exit or logout

clean /var/logs and or use the MX-Clean-Up . if your linux only apt remove samba it may provide some extra space if not used. few other programs and or games could also be removed to clear free up Disc real-estate. Food for thought.

-last oddity - MX-user-manager creating an account and after login logout and trying run compton did not see any change yet remove or delete Test1 account. I did not see benefit from normal Xfce4-desktop use need to run such compton. ?

checking the process tree do see pipe-wire still holding the EUID# to the account holding pipe-wire process.
easily killed off by sudo kill -9 4313 or what ever the pid will be per.

this shares another option found in /etc/login.defs where by when deleting an account all user account parts are account delete USERDEL_CMD

this removes user specific Crons and Jobs , it does not kill any holding account process. Pipe-Wire pid is not taken care of but should extinguish at logout and or reboot /shutdown-reboot. hope this helps a little understanding. use of word "my pipes ie | character " > >> either are redirects | is pass onto next command the baton pass per say. give too next.

Again to iterate rm -Rf "anything" let alone rm -rf "anything" be very careful to use of this particular command line. Delete important system files pray back up is kept to date.