Xfce Forum

NuncEstBibendum

Member

Registered: 2017-10-13

Posts: 13

XFCE freezing after clicking on launcher

I am running XFCE 4.12.1 on a Slackware 14.2 system. When my desktop is up and running, From an xterm I can execute the following command:

    ssvnc -cmd -ssh xyz:0

This essentially will launch a VNC session (with TigerVNC, in my case) against the remote system xyz. Prior to doing this, I made sure to do

    ssh-add

from an xterm in my XFCE desktop system, so that I can ssh in xyz with public key authentication - without having to supply a password for SSH. Now xyz is running x11vnc with a password, that the ssvnc command prompts me for, but that is all. This works as expected.

    I then created a launcher in my top XFCE panel. When I click on it, the ssvnc command above is executed. The problem is that, more often
than not, shortly after having launched my desktop session afresh, this action freezes my session. The mouse pointer can still be moved around,
but my session becomes totally unresponsive. In fact, in the said panel I have a clock with a seconds counter, and that counter freezes.

    The only way out of this is to kill my X session (from a virtual terminal or some other system, via SSH.) It is not enough to kill the SSH
commands elicited by the ssvnc line above.

    To add insult to injury, after a while the launcher above does work as expected. I am not sure how long a while, or even whether it is a
completely random thing, or why, all of a sudden, it does work, and seems to do so for as long as my session is alive.

    This seems to be a problem with the way in which ssvnc (a Tcl/Tk application) interacts with XFCE - but I am at a loss to understand what
it is that may be causing the problem, and how to solve it.

        Any ideas on how to diagnose and solve this issue?

Sideburns

Member

From: Trinidad, CO

Registered: 2011-03-30

Posts: 467

Website

Re: XFCE freezing after clicking on launcher

Have top running in an xterm when you do this.  That way, even if everything freezes, you can see what process locked everything up.

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NuncEstBibendum

Member

Registered: 2017-10-13

Posts: 13

Re: XFCE freezing after clicking on launcher

I still don't know what the issue is, but I found a workaround. In case it might be of help to someone:

Instead of instructing the launcher to execute the ssvnc command that I mentioned, I changed things so that it will execute the following script instead:

#! /bin/sh

ssvnc -cmd -ssh xyz:0 > /tmp/Out.log 2>&1

With this, the launcher always does the right thing. I am guessing it is something to do with the way stdout and stderr are handled from within the launcher app - but that is just a guess. Maybe XFCE developers could chip in here?