xfce panel fails to launch booting from live cd on some computers

[charlestu]

Binary package hint: xfce4-panel

I have hit a problem with xubuntu 7.04. Although i have been able to launch the live cd successfully on a few machines, on one machine, consistently, the xfce panel starts to load (a dark bar appears at the top and bottom of the desktop) then the desktop resizes to fill the whole screen. If i launch the panel, or hit <ctrl><alt><bksp> to restart the session, it seems to work fine.

The computer is a compaq presario 5726, which is a pentium iii, 500mhz, with 160mb of ram (pc100).

[charlestu (charlestu)]

I see confirmation of this bug in comments here:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-panel/+bug/53897/comments/5
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-panel/+bug/53897/comments/6

and possibly in bug report here:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity/+bug/105971
and comment here:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xubuntu-meta/+bug/70561/comments/5

and the following may be a duplicate of this bug:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-panel/+bug/138475

[mungewell (simon-mungewell)]

I am seeing this behaviour with Gutsy Beta, the panel is not running after the LiveCD has booted.

You can get it by right-clicking and 'add launcher' with xfce4-panel as the application. Double click the created launcher icon to get panel (i.e. it does work on the this machine).

The machine in question is a Dell Prescision 210 with 450MByte RAM.

Cheers,
Simon.

[charlestu (charlestu)]

This is not a duplicate of bug #138335 which relates specifically to the pager. Although this bug is confirmed on gutsy beta, along with some follow-up and error messages, in comments there:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-panel/+bug/138335/

[charlestu (charlestu)]

There is another report of this bug on xubuntu feisty, as well as some follow-up with logs, configs and xsession errors, in this bug report:
  https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce/+bug/94182/
That bug was incorrectly (imo) marked as a duplicate of a different xfce panel bug (which might be related).

To clarify:
1) This bug relates to xubuntu live-cd only. It is not present when booting from a hard disk xubuntu installation on the same computer, even after disabling the login prompt (to mimic the boot behavior of the live-cd).
2) This bug only "appears" when first booting. Once the panel is (re)launched from the terminal, or by creating a desktop launcher, or by restarting the x-session (<ctrl><alt><bhsp>), the panel loads and behaves normally.
3) This bug appears consistently (ie on every boot) on some machines but not at all on others. I have tried changing the video card to several different agp cards but the bug appeared when using any of them. I have tried booting from a dvd drive, a cd-rw drive and a 40x cd drive, but the bug appeared with each of them.

[André Pirard (a.pirard)]

I can confirm this problem, and with a possibly enlightening variation.
This is using 2 Tecra 8000 @ 366 & 400 MHz, 256 MiB.
I've never seen the problem with 7.06.
With 7.10, I have seen it consistently in a dozen or so LiveCD boots.
With both 7.10 CR and release.
Except once, at which time I quit the idea I was facing a feature.
But I have seen it twice in HDD sessions too !!!
(Not quite sure the reason is the same, though)

Once it happened, the situation looks "sticky".
The problem survives further logout-logins, they will miss the panels.
Launching ps-missing xfce4-panel stops the problem indeed.

During CD boot, this is what I observe.
The first, upper panel background is first drawn.
Then the Desktop background (standard) is drawn on top of it.
(During HDD boot, Desktop background is drawn well before.)
Following which there is no further signs of xfce4-panel.

What would make CD boots fail on one machine & succeed on another
and then make the next version do the opposite?
Let alone the same CD fail and then succeed on the same machine?
Would it be a time race condition?

Are #138902 and 53897 the same bug?
If yes,
- "dapper" should be removed from any title
- severity of what happened to happen to me should be higher

Being reproducible, it should be rather easy to correct.
We already know that starting of xfce4-panel later does it.

[Lionel Le Folgoc (mrpouit)]

Hi,

Are you still experiencing this issue with a more recent version (for example Xfce 4.6 on jaunty)?
Thanks.

[Lionel Le Folgoc (mrpouit)]

No more input, closing.