MX21 XFCE RDP display issue [Solved]

[Penobscot]

I have an ongoing problem when I connect to my VM via RDP. The desktop is blank--no icons or Conky--and application windows are missing their controls and can't be resized, closed with the mouse, nor, in some cases, moved. On blank areas of the screen the mouse pointer becomes an X. In the past I've been able to fix it by restoring a previous version of the VM.

I believe something is corrupted with my user account. The same account displays properly with VNC. If I log into RDP as root it also displays properly.

Thanks for any help.

Code: Select all

System:    Kernel: 5.10.0-26-amd64 [5.10.197-1] x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.1 
           parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.10.0-26-amd64 root=UUID=<filter> ro quiet splash 
           Desktop: Xfce 4.18.1 tk: Gtk 3.24.24 info: xfce4-panel dm: LightDM 1.26.0 
           Distro: MX-21.3_x64 Wildflower September 18  2022 base: Debian GNU/Linux 11 (bullseye) 
Machine:   Type: Unknown Mobo: FreeBSD model: BHYVE v: 1.0 serial: <filter> UEFI: BHYVE v: 13.0 
           date: 11/10/2020 
CPU:       Info: 2x Dual Core model: Intel Xeon E5-2620 v2 bits: 64 type: MT SMP arch: Ivy Bridge 
           family: 6 model-id: 3E (62) stepping: 4 microcode: N/A cache: L2: 30 MiB 
           flags: avx lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 bogomips: 33575 
           Speed: 2098 MHz min/max: N/A Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2098 2: 2098 3: 2098 4: 2098 5: 2098 
           6: 2098 7: 2098 8: 2098 
           Vulnerabilities: Type: gather_data_sampling status: Not affected 
           Type: itlb_multihit status: KVM: VMX unsupported 
           Type: l1tf mitigation: PTE Inversion 
           Type: mds mitigation: Clear CPU buffers; SMT Host state unknown 
           Type: meltdown mitigation: PTI 
           Type: mmio_stale_data status: Unknown: No mitigations 
           Type: retbleed status: Not affected 
           Type: spec_rstack_overflow status: Not affected 
           Type: spec_store_bypass status: Vulnerable 
           Type: spectre_v1 mitigation: usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization 
           Type: spectre_v2 
           mitigation: Retpolines, STIBP: disabled, RSB filling, PBRSB-eIBRS: Not affected 
           Type: srbds status: Not affected 
           Type: tsx_async_abort status: Not affected 
Graphics:  Device-1: driver: N/A bus-ID: 00:1d.0 chip-ID: fb5d:40fb class-ID: 0300 
           Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.11 driver: loaded: N/A unloaded: fbdev 
           display-ID: :10.0 screens: 1 
           Screen-1: 0 s-res: 1920x1080 s-dpi: 96 s-size: 508x286mm (20.0x11.3") 
           s-diag: 583mm (23") 
           Monitor-1: rdp0 res: 1920x1080 hz: 50 
           OpenGL: renderer: llvmpipe (LLVM 11.0.1 256 bits) v: 4.5 Mesa 20.3.5 compat-v: 3.1 
           direct render: Yes 
Audio:     Message: No device data found. 
           Sound Server-1: PulseAudio v: 14.2 running: yes 
Network:   Device-1: Red Hat Virtio network driver: virtio-pci v: 1 modules: virtio_pci port: 2080 
           bus-ID: 00:04.0 chip-ID: 1af4:1000 class-ID: 0200 
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: -1 duplex: unknown mac: <filter> 
Drives:    Local Storage: total: 70 GiB used: 19.65 GiB (28.1%) 
           ID-1: /dev/vda maj-min: 254:0 model: N/A size: 70 GiB block-size: physical: 65536 B 
           logical: 512 B type: N/A serial: N/A scheme: GPT 
           SMART Message: Unknown smartctl error. Unable to generate data. 
Partition: ID-1: / raw-size: 44.93 GiB size: 44.05 GiB (98.04%) used: 18.79 GiB (42.7%) fs: ext4 
           dev: /dev/vda2 maj-min: 254:2 
           ID-2: /boot/efi raw-size: 256 MiB size: 252 MiB (98.46%) used: 415 KiB (0.2%) fs: vfat 
           dev: /dev/vda1 maj-min: 254:1 
           ID-3: /home raw-size: 23.31 GiB size: 22.84 GiB (97.98%) used: 878.8 MiB (3.8%) 
           fs: ext4 dev: /dev/vda4 maj-min: 254:4 
Swap:      Kernel: swappiness: 15 (default 60) cache-pressure: 100 (default) 
           ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 1.5 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) priority: -2 
           dev: /dev/vda3 maj-min: 254:3 
Sensors:   Message: No sensor data found. Is lm-sensors configured? 
Repos:     Packages: note: see --pkg apt: 2049 lib: 1023 flatpak: 0 
           No active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list 
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian-stable-updates.list 
           1: deb http://nyc.mirrors.clouvider.net/debian/ bullseye-updates main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/debian.list 
           1: deb http://nyc.mirrors.clouvider.net/debian/ bullseye main contrib non-free
           2: deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/mx.list 
           1: deb http://mxlinux.mirrors.tds.net/mxlinux/mx/repo/ bullseye main non-free
           Active apt repos in: /etc/apt/sources.list.d/temp.list 
           1: deb http://mxrepo.com/mx/repo/ temp main
Info:      Processes: 263 Uptime: 12h 35m wakeups: 1 Memory: 3.82 GiB used: 2.08 GiB (54.4%) 
           Init: SysVinit v: 2.96 runlevel: 5 default: 5 tool: systemctl Compilers: gcc: 10.2.1 
           alt: 10 Client: shell wrapper v: 5.1.4-release inxi: 3.3.06 
Boot Mode: UEFI

[l0dr3]

.. The same account displays properly with VNC. If I log into RDP as root it also displays properly.

Sounds like a compositor issue ...

In the affected users-xsession, try:

- disable compositing at all (Window Manager Tweaks)
- switch from 'compton' to 'Xfvwm (Xfce) Compositor' or vice versa (MX Tweak|Compositor)
- try different compositor settings ... ??

kind regards

l0dr3

[Penobscot]

No joy, but...

I created another user. As expected, RDP was fine. I then ran diff on the good and bad home directories. One thing I noticed was hundreds of files in ~/.cache/sessions, mostly with a .state extension. After some cursory reading I deleted the sessions directory altogether and logged out. Working!

I don't know what's creating all those files, but I can't get MX Cleanup, which might have handled this, to run on a schedule.