[SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

esuhl · 2021-01-30 22:23:30

I recently installed a fresh Arch32 installation with XFCE on an old low-spec netbook. I then used a custom/renamed .xinitrc to run Firefox in twm. It worked perfectly for a day or two, between reboots... I'd boot into a console and use either "startx" to run XFCE, or the custom .xinitrc to start Firefox in twm.

Then Firefox crashed (in twm), and I used CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE to return to the console to reboot. When I next started XFCE, the following pop-up message appeared, with two options -- Execute or Remove:

Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel, do you want to restart it?
The plug-in restarted more than once in the last 60 seconds. If you press Execute the panel will try to restart the plug-in otherwise it will be permanently removed from the panel.

Clicking Execute (or trying to subsequently add the Application Menu to the panel) just causes the message to reappear. Remove does what it says. All other panel items work as expected. Firefox works fine in twm, too.

-------------------

I'm not sure how to troubleshoot this. I can't imagine what could have affected the XFCE Application Menu plugin and nothing else...

Any ideas...? :-)

Last edited by esuhl (2021-02-02 18:46:55)

levi · 2021-01-30 22:36:32

Does this bevhavior survive a reboot, or even a full turn off and turn on again? If it does it suggests it's affected the filesystem and not just the machine's RAM/CPU state.

esuhl · 2021-01-30 23:05:49

Hi, Levi :-)

levi wrote:

Does this bevhavior survive a reboot, or even a full turn off and turn on again? If it does it suggests it's affected the filesystem and not just the machine's RAM/CPU state.

Yes --the issue happened yesterday (or the day before). I've rebooted, tested other XFCE components, applications, etc. Everything else (seems to) works fine. :-/

I just tried deleting the XFCE session and rebooting... But it didn't seem to have any effect.

levi · 2021-01-30 23:53:08

You can check the main fileystem by doing a 'pacman -Qkk|grep -v 0\ altered', but that did give me a lot of noise on the machine I just tested it on, and that's running fine. You might be able to spot something bad using that, but maybe not.

Also you can sort files using 'ls -rt' so that the newest modifications come last. That might help in spotting where changes have been made. You might also find the '-mtime' test in find useful, although I've personally found it difficult to use that when I last tried. That said, I just tried it and it seems to work as expected here, so maybe I was not using that option last time I tried to do that. Use it like 'find ~ -mtime -3' to find everything that's got a modification date more recent than three days ago, although using that I've just found some files that claim to have been modified in 2030!

mistersmee · 2021-01-31 15:52:37

You are using startx, right? You could redirect the STDERR of startx into a log-file like so:

startx 2>/location/tolog-file

I have it at /tmp/X.log.
Very useful for troubleshooting. That should give you the error that Xfce is presumably throwing. Will shed more light here.

esuhl · 2021-01-31 15:52:38

levi wrote:

You can check the main fileystem by doing a 'pacman -Qkk|grep -v 0\ altered', but that did give me a lot of noise on the machine I just tested it on, and that's running fine. You might be able to spot something bad using that, but maybe not.

Ah... thank you! That lists a handful of files with "modification time" or "size" mismatches (pastebin). I'm not entirely sure what to make of it.

I checked my /etc/fstab (pastebin) and I was using the relatime mount option for the partitions. The wiki suggests that it's the default option anyway, so I've now changed my fstab to only use the defaults mount option instead.

levi wrote:

Also you can sort files using 'ls -rt' so that the newest modifications come last. That might help in spotting where changes have been made.

That gives me the same output as 'ls $HOME' (although the files/dirs are listed in a different order). :-/

levi wrote:

You might also find the '-mtime' test in find useful, although I've personally found it difficult to use that when I last tried. That said, I just tried it and it seems to work as expected here, so maybe I was not using that option last time I tried to do that. Use it like 'find ~ -mtime -3' to find everything that's got a modification date more recent than three days ago, although using that I've just found some files that claim to have been modified in 2030!

I tried find ~ -mtime -4 (pastebin), and got a huge list of files, all in my home user directory. Ignoring the .cache subdirectory, .mozilla profile, and a chroot directory I created, the only interesting bit is possibly in the top 20 lines or so, where files in /home/me/.config/... are mentioned.

I tried reinstalling the XFCE group, then creating a new user to test XFCE, but still same problem occurs.

========

There's one issue that I've had from the moment that I installed Arch32 (last week). Usually (65% of the time) when I log in to the console as root, nothing happens for 30 seconds, then the screen blanks and opens a fresh login prompt. Logging in a second time is successful. This never happens when I log in as a user. :-/ Probably unrelated to the XFCE issue...?

Thanks for your help :-)

levi · 2021-01-31 20:16:22

Yes, 'ls -rt' just changes to sort order. You generally need to be in the right directory before running it, it simply sorts the files in the folder you're accessing.

Find will only find files in your home directory because the first argument to it was '~' - your home directory. If you want it to scan other places change that, although it may be slower.

I'd suggest clearing out ~/.config/xfce then reinstalling the xfce group, and see if that temporarily improves your situation. I'd expect you to be able to reproduce the failure that caused you to open this thread, but second time round maybe you'll have a better idea exactly when it happened.

Last edited by levi (2021-01-31 20:16:58)

esuhl · 2021-02-01 16:46:30

levi wrote:

Yes, 'ls -rt' just changes to sort order. You generally need to be in the right directory before running it, it simply sorts the files in the folder you're accessing.
Find will only find files in your home directory because the first argument to it was '~' - your home directory. If you want it to scan other places change that, although it may be slower.

Oh, of course! Silly me! I'm not sure where else I'd want to scan, though...

levi wrote:

I'd suggest clearing out ~/.config/xfce then reinstalling the xfce group, and see if that temporarily improves your situation. I'd expect you to be able to reproduce the failure that caused you to open this thread, but second time round maybe you'll have a better idea exactly when it happened.

Thanks. I wiped (moved) the ~/.config/xfce4 directory, reinstalled the xfce group and the packages from the xfce4-goodies group that I'd also installed, then rebooted. But as soon as I "startx", the Application Menu "unexpectedly left the panel", as before.

I'm stumped... :-/

levi · 2021-02-01 23:52:29

Ah so that's made no difference to the behaviour. I don't knowingly run any parts of the xfce distribution these days, so I don't know if it's broken for everyone, and it's not something I can easily test with the hardware I have.

mistersmee · 2021-02-02 12:30:50

Hey, maybe try what I suggested, use

startx 2>/location/tolog-file

instead of the usual startx.
That will at least get us an error message to work something with.

Last edited by mistersmee (2021-02-02 12:31:30)

esuhl · 2021-02-02 18:46:36

@levi -- No worries. Thanks again for your help.

@mistermee -- Sorry I missed your previous post. I was examining the log file, when I did a system update (pacman -Syu) as I've done several times in the past, but today's updates have fixed the problem!

In case it's of interest to anyone, the updates installed were:

libcap
ca-certificates-mozilla
libglvnd
libsrvg
libgtop
libxfce4ui
libxt
nss
xfce4-taskmanager

Cheers all :-)

Arch Linux

#1 2021-01-30 22:23:30

[SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

#2 2021-01-30 22:36:32

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

#3 2021-01-30 23:05:49

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

#4 2021-01-30 23:53:08

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

#5 2021-01-31 15:52:37

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

#6 2021-01-31 15:52:38

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

#7 2021-01-31 20:16:22

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

#8 2021-02-01 16:46:30

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

#9 2021-02-01 23:52:29

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

#10 2021-02-02 12:30:50

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

#11 2021-02-02 18:46:36

Re: [SOLVED] XFCE: Plug-in "Application Menu" unexpectedly left the panel

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