Xfce Forum

monkadelicd

Member

Registered: 2013-09-15

Posts: 5

No desktop icons, taskbar, or panel after login

Recently I have been troubleshooting a problem with getting Synergy server to autostart before login.

I'm running Debian 7.1.0 with XFCE. It was recommended to try GDM3 to see if Synergy server autostarts before login there as a troubleshooting step.

I did this and found that Synergy starts properly but after one or two restarts somewhere along the way I must have made an accidental change that is causing a problem with my DE loading after login.

The login screen appears correctly with GDM3 or LightDM selected as default display manager. After I enter my credentials and press enter all I see is a wallpaper.

After a few seconds my PostLogin script runs because I get Synergy server running and can use my mouse and keyboard across all three of my configured PCs.

That is all that seems to work though. I don't see any desktop icons, taskbar, or XFCE panel. I get no response from right-clicking or left-clicking. All I have is a mouse cursor and a wallpaper.

If I switch to tty1 with Ctrl+Alt+1, loging as root, and try to

startxfce4

I get:

Fatal server error:
Server is already active for display 0
          If this server is no longer running, remove /tmp/.X0-lock
          and start again.


Please consult the The X.Org Foundation Support
          at http://wiki.x.org
for help.

The prompt isn't displayed yet, but after about 5 seconds this is printed to screen:

No protocol specified
xinit: giving up
xinit: unable to connect to X server: Resource temporarily unavailable
xinit: server error

then I am returned to the root prompt

What error logs can I check to narrow this down? I'm not a Linux expert so I'm not sure which ones are important here of if all the relevant logs are in /var/log/

Please help me out here, folks. This is starting to get really frustrating.

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 10,996

Re: No desktop icons, taskbar, or panel after login

You don't mention the version of Xfce you are using.

Not sure about Debian, but does it have a .xsession-errors log file in your $HOME directory? If so, there may be something relevant there.

You might also try clearing out your saved sessions cache. Before you login, go to the first tty (Ctrl+Alt+F1), login as your normal user, then delete the .cache/sessions directory (in case the saved sessions cache has become corrupted).

If I switch to tty1 with Ctrl+Alt+1, loging as root, and try to

startxfce4

You should start Xfce using a normal user account, not the root account. But in your case, Xfce is probably already running which is why it won't start again.

Last edited by ToZ (2013-09-20 13:13:41)

---

Please remember to mark your thread [SOLVED] to make it easier for others to find
--- How To Ask For Help | FAQ | Developer Wiki  |  Community | Contribute ---

monkadelicd

Member

Registered: 2013-09-15

Posts: 5

Re: No desktop icons, taskbar, or panel after login

Thank you. I saw this in the .xsession-errors

synergys(3114): Operation not permitted

I changed it back to synergy instead of synergys in my startup script and I have my desktop back again.

now back to my other problem with synergy not loading properly before logging in when I use lightdm.