Understanding the session manager (and fix problems)

wurzel · 2022-05-05 15:09:51

Hello,

I'm using an up to date Arch Linux with XFCE4 and LightDM (details below) and have some trouble with XFCE's session manager.

After the installation about one year ago, when testing the "session restore", it would start & recover pretty much everything I was hoping for. I didn't configure anything -- it worked just out of the box with at least the following applications:

* Firefox
* Thunar
* notepadqq
* xfce4-terminal
* LibreOffice
* thunderbird

Doesn't cover "chromium", but that's okay (starting it manually would offer to restore the tabs).

This greatly appreciated behaviour somehow changed after a while.
Now Thunar is not restarted at all, and when I start it automatically, it won't recover the previous tabs.

Thunar is not visible in the list of applications shown in "current session" in the "session and startup" GUI (btw, I also can't see LibreOffice there, and don't know whether the problem also is with LibreOffice).

The content of "~/.cache/sessions/" has a separate Thunar entry (none for LibreOffice):

$ ls -la ~/.cache/sessions/
total 40
drwx------  3 sn sn 4096 May  3 11:12 .
drwx------ 23 sn sn 4096 Mar  3 17:52 ..
drwx------  2 sn sn 4096 Jan 18  2021 thumbs-rechenknecht:0
-rw-r--r--  1 sn sn   59 May  3 11:12 Thunar-2070f9c28-6c46-4c6e-a566-4d8b799f306a
-rw-r--r--  1 sn sn 4240 May  1 19:25 xfce4-session-rechenknecht:0

"Saved sessions" contains one session "Default", I don't know what the meaning of this is. I've deleted the saved session recently, restore of the session was working as usual, and the entry was created again. Once created I think it keeps the date of creation. I don't see a dialog offereing me a choice of different sessions at login.

Here some details on my system:

* thunar 4.16.11-2
* xfce4-session 4.16.0-2
* xfwm4 4.16.1-3
* xfdesktop 4.16.0-2
* lightdm 1:1.30.0-4

Would be great if somebody knows what could be the reasons behind that problem, or how I can I troubleshoot this issue.

Thanks!

ToZ · 2022-05-06 02:20:57

Hello and welcome.

There are a few outstanding bugs with restore session functionality. Have a look at the second page of the issues list for an indication. I've never been a saved session user, but having a look at it now, it appears that you need to enable Settings Manager > Session & Startup > General > Display chooser on login. Then on login, click the + to add a new session, and once configured properly, manually save it from the current session tab (keeping in mind the bug that the name of the proper session isn't displayed in the titlebar. Then when you restart, you'll have multiple sessions to choose from:

Using this method, thunar does restore properly with tabs. If thunar restoring still doesn't work for you, make sure that it's restart style is not set to "Never" on the current session tab.

wurzel · 2022-05-10 13:48:28

Thanks for the information. I'll have a look at the bug report disussions reg. session manager and will change & test the setting for "session chooser".

Some background for clarification:

Some weeks ago I suffered from an AMD GPU driver bug that caused a frozen GUI once a week or so. I had to switch to a virtual console (CTRL-ALT-F1...) and invoke a "reboot" via root, which probably resembles a "kill -15 ..." for all applications.

Also recently I had the situation that the suspend/resume of my system didn't work properly, and I had to power off and on via power button, which probably resembles a "kill -9 ..." for all applications.

That's the situations where I'd ideally want my session manager to work, too -- i.e. even if I can't log out properly. If I'm not mistaken, that's what also worked originally...but I may be wrong here.

I'd have another question for this "GUI freeze" scenario:

If invoking "reboot" via console and root user doesn't trigger the "save session" feature of applications (and obviously the power off via power button won't trigger that either), is there a way to "trigger" the session manager "save" from a virtual console? i.e. before invoking "reboot" via console and "root", to somehow explicitly trigger "save" or execute a "proper" logout of the user from XFCE's login manager?

Thanks!

ToZ · 2022-05-10 17:54:29

wurzel wrote:

I'd have another question for this "GUI freeze" scenario:
If invoking "reboot" via console and root user doesn't trigger the "save session" feature of applications (and obviously the power off via power button won't trigger that either), is there a way to "trigger" the session manager "save" from a virtual console? i.e. before invoking "reboot" via console and "root", to somehow explicitly trigger "save" or execute a "proper" logout of the user from XFCE's login manager?

Thanks!

You can run:

xfce4-session-logout -r

...to reboot the session with session save (if enabled). But you need to have a valid x session to run that command.

wurzel · 2022-05-12 15:59:43

Thanks! I hope that I won't run into such a "GUI freeze" anymore, but in case I do, that sounds like a solution.

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#1 2022-05-05 15:09:51

Understanding the session manager (and fix problems)

#2 2022-05-06 02:20:57

Re: Understanding the session manager (and fix problems)

#3 2022-05-10 13:48:28

Re: Understanding the session manager (and fix problems)

#4 2022-05-10 17:54:29

Re: Understanding the session manager (and fix problems)

#5 2022-05-12 15:59:43

Re: Understanding the session manager (and fix problems)

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