[gutsy] [beta] xubuntu panel pager missing

[Collins Richey]

Latest maintenance installed on Gutsy - fully up to date as of today.

Pager does not appear on bottom panel. Even if I right click, add new item, select pager, and click the plus key, nothing happens

This is a laptop, if that makes a difference.

On my desktop at same levels, pager appears normally.

[Jérôme Guelfucci (jerome-guelfucci-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you for your bug report. I can't reproduce this, I'm marking the affected package as xfce4-panel, although it might not be the right, but it will enable some xubuntu guys to have a look. Leaving as new until someone can confirm.

[vonHalenbach (lustik)]

I can confirm on xubuntu-7.10-beta-desktop-i386.iso from 25-Sep-2007 12:16 554M .

The xfce4-panel seems to not be started automaticly. I can open a terminal an issue the command "xfce4-panel &" manually.
This affects usability of the live cd very much, so i think the importance should be increased from medium to high.

I have tested this with different settings for language and graphics resolutions. I even tried the "save graphics mode" without success.
The file /var/log/Xorg.0.log shows that i use the "fb" graphics driver. My monitor and graphics card was correctly identified.

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

this is an annoying bug indeed and we don;t know under which circumstances it appears
is there anything relevant in ~/.xsession-errors on the live session when the panel does not start?
can you reproduse this with an installed system?

[vonHalenbach (lustik)]

I am currently on the livecd. There are indeed some error messages. I am not brave enough to install it on this computer, because i don't want to damage my working Kubuntu Feisty system. Tomorrow, i am able to test an installation on a spare computer.

I have seen, that when i choose a resolution above 800x600px, that i get no splash screen when the livecd boots and that the spash screen is distorted with all rainbow colors when i shutdown the system. This may be related to this bug.

Is it possible to use a command on the kernel, to start up with a fixed resolution and the framebuffer driver or the "nv" driver? I have the graphics card Geforce2 MX400.

[charlestu (charlestu)]

I have had the same problem as vonHalenbach. When booting from the fiesty live cd the xfce panel fails to launch. This is different from the pager missing issue reported here. See https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-panel/+bug/138902

[charlestu (charlestu)]

The confirmation seems to be a different bug not related to the pager. This is true of at least one of the "duplicates" as well. I added a link to a bug for the panel issue under comments.

[vonHalenbach (lustik)]

This bug seems to be only on the live cd. I am currently in an installed gutsy and there is no problem with the panel.

The file /.xsession-errors in my home directory has the same error messages as on the live cd, but this has nothing to do with the bug.

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

can you reproduce it in the liveCD multiple times in the same boot (ctrl-alt-backspace or sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart) or just on first autologin?

[vonHalenbach (lustik)]

This happens only in the first login of the live cd. I tried both of your tipps and they worked. The panels appeared after the next automatical login.

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

I wonder if you can stop the boot process and see if it makes a difference if you modify a file.
pass break=init to the kernel (F6 in the liveCD) and rw instead of ro (I hope it has no unintended consequences)

hopefully it will get into a shell before running the init scripts
if you leave that shell everything should boot up as before

if this works try the same thing but once in the shell modify /etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc
to not launch xfdesktop4 in the background (remove &)

or you could try other thing in that script, puttin a sleep 4 before lauching panel

maybe with one of the mods the panel will come up

I suspect some race between the xfce apps at startup which only appears due to the CDs slow read times.

[vonHalenbach (lustik)]

I have tried it. I passed -- break=init to the kernel and came in a shell, but in this shell i could not edit /etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc because at this time it doesn't exist. Only when i already booted into the system, i can go there and edit it, but then it makes no sense anymore.

I have seen, that the panel must be loaded, but it does not load completly, because the icons on it(firefox, Apllications,places) do not appear. It displays only the grey bars for about a second and then the blue background and the icons on the background appear( my harddisks, floppy, trash) and that's it.

I searched around on the system a bit and found that this must be a xfce session. There is a file in the directory /etc/xdg/xfce4-session/xfce4-session.rc which might be the one with the error inside.
I found a line with "Thunar, --daemon" which i belive won't work as it is. This session file is automaticly used for systems which have no session file at all, which is true for a fresh started live cd.

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

indeed that Thunar line is buggy.
As for the filesystem being mounted elsewhere, I'll have to check as I do not know offhand where the squashfs on the CD is mounted initially
I think it is under /root, so /root/etc/xdg ...

[vonHalenbach (lustik)]

The file is there in the root directory, as you sayd, but i can't edit them with nano or vim. Every time i try to run any program in this shell i get an error message.

nano:error while loading shared libraries:libncursesw.5.so

This is already above my abilities, because i may have to mount the squashfs on my memory, edit and then boot further from there. The only idea, that comes to my mind is to patch the binary of the squashfs and burn a new cd to test those changes you suggested, jani.

best regards
Stefan von Halenbach

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

don't bother with new squashfs it's a lot of work. I hope I'll trey to debug it this weekend, but today I could not dl the iso, it was very sloooow.
But if the fs is rw so it's only launchin nano is a problme there may be another thing to try if you are not bored yet :)
instead of editing the file run
 sed -i 's/xfdesktop&/xfdesktop/' /etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc

this should drop the & from the xfdesktop& line and hopefully sed does not need ncurses or other libs that aren;t there

another approach is to chroot /root
and maybe in there nano will work
then exit the chroot and the init shell

thanks

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

I could only get this in virtualbox and break=init then touch any file under /root made it go away, weird.
Today's iso brings up the panels even without break init in vbox. I wonder if you can test it and see if there's any luck for you
the change since last one is the removal of the places plugin from the panel (it was buggy).
As for break=init the easy way of editing files one you get to the initramfs prompt is
LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/root/lib /root/usr/bin/vim.tiny /root/path/to/file

Jani

[Jackdaw28 (simoncsoka)]

I am getting the same error on xubuntu release candidate with all updates (i.e. not a live CD)

[Jani Monoses (jani)]

Jackdaw28,
 you mean the pager missing from the panel or both panels missing alltogether?

[ErikJ (eckejonsson)]

My Xubuntu 7.10 (all updates installed) have the same problem but only if i login locally on the machine.
If I login remote with Xming the panel is there as it should be.
The startup screen for Xfce always say that the Panel is starting.

[David Császár (p5)]

i can confirm this (both panels missing after the two grey bars appear for a second)
with the current xubuntu 7.10 desktop iso.
happens with cd boot and after installation and after 1st login. after that it seems ok.
the machine is an mp995, 128mb, 400mhz, no network.

[skrisman (ssandboxx)]

My Xubuntu 7.10 has the same problem on my Dell Latitude D600. I was also having a missing panel issue before so i ran xfce4-panel in the terminal. When i tried to add the pager to the bottom panel, the xfce4-panel crashed with this error:

Could not open "Pager": pager: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thanks for helping make Xubuntu better. I am confirming this bug as there is enough information for the developers to begin working.

Thanks again for helping make Xubuntu better!

[Michael Casadevall (mcasadevall)]

Is it possible if someone can test if this exists on hardy or intrepid? I can't reproduce in Intrepid or Hardy or Gusty. It appears ncursesw5 is screwed up on your system (which is causing more issues that just the panel being broken). If you can confirm this is still a bug for you, please reconfirm this bug; marking incomplete.

[wolfger (wolfger)]

We'd like to figure out what's causing this bug for you, but we haven't heard back from you in a while. Could you please provide the requested information? Thanks!

[skrisman (ssandboxx)]

I have since fixed this bug. My solution was to completely create a new account on my computer, and switch over my /home/* folder. I still see an occasional bug not related to this one I believe where the pager dissappears as i'm switching workspaces. Attempting to add an item to the pager fixes it though.

[Collins Richey (crichey)]

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 2:43 AM, wolfger <email address hidden> wrote:
> We'd like to figure out what's causing this bug for you, but we haven't
> heard back from you in a while. Could you please provide the requested
> information? Thanks!
>

I'm no longer running that environment. If you can't confirm from
anyone else, close the bug.

--
Collins Richey
     If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
     of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.

[Collins Richey (crichey)]

On Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 4:38 PM, skrisman <email address hidden> wrote:
> I have since fixed this bug. My solution was to completely create a new
> account on my computer, and switch over my /home/* folder. I still see
> an occasional bug not related to this one I believe where the pager
> dissappears as i'm switching workspaces. Attempting to add an item to
> the pager fixes it though.
>
> --
> [gutsy] [beta] xubuntu panel pager missing
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/138335
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

Thanks for the info. I,m no longer running that environment, so I told
them to close the bug. I haven't encountered the problem with xfce on
other distros.

--
Collins Richey
     If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
     of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.

[Cody A.W. Somerville (cody-somerville)]

Closing the bug.