Couple of Panel Apps Losing Configuration

MountainDewManiac · 2018-05-28 01:37:28

I've been occasionally noticing that, upon boot, my sensor plugin app has, instead of showing ONLY my CPU's (two) core's temperatures and my hard drive temperature - and in Fahrenheit, as I'm a dumb anachronism - it was just displaying "Sensors."

Also, when that occurs, my weather app shows the "no data" thing, like it does when someone changes the API(?) behavior and the developer hasn't gotten around to changing his app to deal with it yet. I lose my location information, the two-line setup for displaying information, and the six pieces of information that I prefer to have displayed (temperature and apparent temperature, then humidity and dew point, then wind speed and direction).

To be honest, this has had me somewhat worried. The laptop is getting some years on it, and I cannot possibly afford to replace the hard drive if it gets pooched. And that was what I was suspecting, a failing hard drive in its early stages.

Then this morning, it happened again! But I finally realized what (I believe) was going on. When I have trouble sleeping, I run VLC and play a documentary or some other file. As my goal is eventually falling asleep, I turn the brightness all the way down. But, first, I open a terminal window and do:

sudo shutdown -P +{time, in minutes}

That way, my computer automatically shuts down. Optimistically, after I have fallen asleep, but that's neither here nor there.

It appears that, when I use this command to automatically shut down my computer, those two panel apps get messed up. They're easy to fix, of course. But I do find this behavior to be annoying. I also find it to be odd - why does this issue only occur with these two specific panel apps? I have several things on three panels and everything else appears to be fine/stable.

Is this not the "proper" way to set up a scheduled automatic shutdown?

What I find really odd about all of this is that my laptop's battery has long ago given up the ghost, lol, so every time my electricity has an interruption - even a momentary "blink" - my laptop instantly and harshly shuts off. I use (IIRC) Ext3, so I no longer worry about all that; upon reboot, everything is still there and still fine including the correct configuration of these two panel apps! So... It doesn't make any sense to me.

Regards,
MDM

Last edited by MountainDewManiac (2018-05-28 01:41:24)

ToZ · 2018-05-28 02:21:48

The "shutdown" command is not a very graceful shutdown. Instead, try this command:

sleep 10m && xfce4-session-logout -h

...change the "10m" (10 minutes) to any value you want. You can use "s" (seconds), "h" (hours), or "d" (days) as suffixes as well.

Which model laptop are you using? Have you run a hard drive check on it?

peter.48 · 2018-05-28 03:19:38

I have the same problem with the same plugins for a few years now, but not only after programmed shutdown, it's random and it happens on different pc's. I think that problem comes from my distribution (Fedora) because after trying with others (Manjaro, Mint and Suse), always with xfce and the same configuration I have seen that this doesn't happen (but I'm not sure: short testing period).

With my very limited knowledge I have only come up with a little barbaric solution to convert "weather.rc" and "xfce4-sensors-plugin.rc" (/home/peter/.config/xfce4/panel/) into "read only".

Last edited by peter.48 (2018-05-28 03:24:01)

MountainDewManiac · 2018-05-28 03:38:06

ToZ wrote:

The "shutdown" command is not a very graceful shutdown. Instead, try this command:
sleep 10m && xfce4-session-logout -h
...change the "10m" (10 minutes) to any value you want. You can use "s" (seconds), "h" (hours), or "d" (days) as suffixes as well.

Thanks. I see "sleep" and "logout" but I don't want either of those, I want "power OFF." Does the -h thing signify that?

ToZ wrote:

Which model laptop are you using? Have you run a hard drive check on it?

It's... a Samsung, lol. I can't read what's (I think) on the bottom, and the power port is messed up, so if I move - or bump - the thing, I spend a good bit of time getting it to power up again. Is there a handy-dandy command for getting that information? It has an Intel i5 of some sort or another in it, six gigabytes of RAM, a 750 gigabyte hard drive, and it's probably only about six years old in truth (but seems older every day - like its owner).

peter.48 wrote:

I have the same problem with the same plugins

Interesting. I'm even more glad that I posted, now.

Regards,
MDM

MountainDewManiac · 2018-05-28 03:40:40

Oh, I just figured out part of my most recent question. The sleep doesn't have anything to do with putting the laptop to "sleep" - it means delay (variable). So I'm basically telling the computer to wait ten minutes before executing the actual command. Which is the logout -h thing.

Regards,
MDM

ToZ · 2018-05-28 10:33:09

MountainDewManiac wrote:

Oh, I just figured out part of my most recent question. The sleep doesn't have anything to do with putting the laptop to "sleep" - it means delay (variable). So I'm basically telling the computer to wait ten minutes before executing the actual command. Which is the logout -h thing.
Regards,
MDM

Yes. Sleep is a delay and xfce4-session-logout -h (the -h means halt or shutdown) is the Xfce command to shutdown the computer. It closes the session properly.

MountainDewManiac · 2018-05-28 19:21:59

Great, thanks again. I'll try that one next time I'm having trouble sleeping. It requires no user input/confirmation, I assume?

Regards,
MDM

ToZ · 2018-05-28 20:09:27

MountainDewManiac wrote:

Great, thanks again. I'll try that one next time I'm having trouble sleeping. It requires no user input/confirmation, I assume?
Regards,
MDM

No. The Xfce command is a user session based command, so no need to enter a password.

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#1 2018-05-28 01:37:28

Couple of Panel Apps Losing Configuration

#2 2018-05-28 02:21:48

Re: Couple of Panel Apps Losing Configuration

#3 2018-05-28 03:19:38

Re: Couple of Panel Apps Losing Configuration

#4 2018-05-28 03:38:06

Re: Couple of Panel Apps Losing Configuration

#5 2018-05-28 03:40:40

Re: Couple of Panel Apps Losing Configuration

#6 2018-05-28 10:33:09

Re: Couple of Panel Apps Losing Configuration

#7 2018-05-28 19:21:59

Re: Couple of Panel Apps Losing Configuration

#8 2018-05-28 20:09:27

Re: Couple of Panel Apps Losing Configuration

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