[Pkg-xfce-devel] xfce4-panel cannot be customized without completely breaking functionality

[Kyle Pearson]

On 5/16/06, Simon Huggins <huggie at earth.li> wrote:
>
> Salut Kyle!
>
> On Tue, May 16, 2006 at 05:33:00PM +0800, Kyle Pearson wrote:
> > I'm running a plain-vanilla [Testing] distribution, with xserver-xorg
> > 6.9and the full xfce4 4.2.3 package (+/- some plugins)on an unmodified
> > 2.6.15 Debian kernel.  when customized in any way (separators, weather
> > plugin, disk- or net-perf, modding the default browser, etc),
> > xfce4-panel-4.2.3-1 will:
>
> > a) on first instance, accept modifications.
>
> > b) somewhere between 2d and 5th instances, crash .
>
> None of us see this.
>
> A crashing panel with the weather plugin is likely to be down to that
> plugin.
>
> Can you reproduce it without that?
>
> > If the desktop is closed and reopened, then xfce4-panel does not
> > reappear, and must henceforth always be called from the console.
> > Console registers gtk errors.
>
> Can we have copies of those please?
>
> If you do reopen it then if you logout and choose to save the session it
> should reappear next time you run X.
>
> > If it is subsequently called from the console, it reappears without any
> > modifications.  Again:  upon re-opening new instances of the desktop the
> > panel never  reappears.
>
> > I've experimented with several different test-users, and the results
> > are always the same.
>
> Hmm, odd.  We don't see this.
>
> I'd suggest starting from scratch by removing
> rm -rf .config .cache .xfce4
> and starting again.
>
> Have you previously run any other xfce4 packages?  Is your machine in
> general unstable?
>
> If you are running testing or unstable then you could try our new
> 4.4beta1 packages which are available at:
> http://www.corsac.net/?rub=xfce
>
> Simon
>

And a big "Howdy!" to you, Simon -- from here in rainy Taiwan!

Yet this is actually quite embarassing.  Here i'd thought i'd gone and
verified that, indeed, it wasn't just the weather plugin that was causing
the problem, but upon receiving your response i went and checked on it and
sure enough, it was the weather plugin alone.

However, i can now confirm -- and i don't know if this is a panel fault or
not, i'm not a coder -- that installation of the weather plugin causes a
segfault, apparently in glibc, and if the panel+weather configuration gets
saved (i.e. -- by shutting down before any crash occurs), then upon
re-opening the desktop the panel doesn't appear, and cannot be restarted
from the console.  At this time, it returns this error message:

*** glibc detected *** free(): invalid pointer: 0x083a3a18 ***
Aborted

And yes, by deleting the .config and .cache files one can restart the panel,
but only if the deletion of those two files is made when the desktop has
been closed to the ?DM login screen. Unfortunately, i wasn't doing this.  I
was deleting them directly from the desktop terminal, and whenever i
restarted the desktop the panel would not  reset and continued to return the
glibc error from the console.

I'm sorry for bothering y'all with this.  I suppose i should search out the
weather-plugin package and report it there?

Just FYI -- i'm a rather new Linux user, and have been using XFCE4 now for
about two years.  I'm very happy with it -- much prefer it to the feature
bloat of GNOME and KDE -- and would like to take this opportunity to
congratulate y'all for the fine work you've been doing.

If y'all ever need someone to do a bit of footwork here in Taiwan, give me a
call;  i'm a seasoned expat with a nose for local business, and would love
to help.

Sorry again for the trouble --

Kyle.
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