Xfce Forum

Moush

Member

Registered: 2012-06-20

Posts: 2

Including panel configuration in a theme package

Hello everyone !

I work for a French startup called eKenOS, and we are designing laptops, tablets and other stuff around a home made motherboard.

We run our laptops on Linux debian-beagle 2.6.32-maia-1.1, using XFCE 4.8.0.3.

My job here is to create theme packages so that we can easily provide a complete theme to the user. I want these packages to include a special panel layout which is kind of our signature. However, i'm havig trouble trying to export a panel configuration from a machine to another.

So far I have tried to replace the ~/.config/xfce4/panel folder (containing all the panel plugins I need) and the ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xml file. I kill xfconfd before replacing the files and then restart with xfce4-panel -r.

- On my first test, my target machine had 1 panel (my custom configuration has 3). No additionnal panel was created and the result was messy...
- On my second test, i created 2 more empty panels on my target machine. After restarting the process, every panel was at the right location, with the right size and transparent background. But the first panel still contained the same plugins than before changing the files, and the others were still empty.

As the location and description of the plugins seem to be in the ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xml file and the ~/.config/xfce4/panel folder, I don't understand what I am doing wrong. I took a look at the other configuration files in ~/.config/xfce4 but none seems to contain useful information for what I want.

If anyone has an idea, please let me know !

PS : sorry for my bad english ^^

secipolla

Member

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 393

Re: Including panel configuration in a theme package

I really won't be able to help you much but you said that your panel setup has plugins and all and what about if the user had set up his panel with his preferred plugins, would you intend that they should disappear?
I think that for them to disappear then you would have maybe to not only change those files you mentioned but also delete/rename all plugin configuration files in .config/xfce4 (and kill all plugins that could possibly be running).

Last edited by secipolla (2012-06-20 14:59:48)

Moush

Member

Registered: 2012-06-20

Posts: 2

Re: Including panel configuration in a theme package

In fact, you helped me pretty much ! Your post made me focus on which process I had to kill before making any change in the files. Searching "killall xfconfd" on Google brought me the answer in this lkubuntu post. (Making xfce look like windows ? eeeeeww...)

I write the full process below in case somebody would like to do the same :

1. Shut down the panel with xfce4-panel -q
2. Kill the xfconf daemon (ex : killall -KILL xfconfd)
3. Kill the xfsettings daemon (ex: killall -KILL xfsettingsd)
4. Backup your ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xml file
5. Backup your ~/.config/xfce4/panel folder
6. Move your new xml file to ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-panel.xml
7. Move your new panel folder to ~/.config/xfce4/panel
8. Restart xfsettings (command xfsettingsd)
9. Restart your panel with xfce4-panel & (this will restart xfconfd)

Before I mark this post solved, I will try to include this process in a package installation script.

Anyways, you were able to help me much Thanks !