Xfce Forum

7604timo

Member

Registered: 2015-03-16

Posts: 1

LDAP users can't load xfconfd/xfce4-session

Dear All,

I have a laptop running a fresh install of Linux Mint 17 and a seperate LDAP server running Ubuntu. Local users on the laptop can login fine, but LDAP users cannot. I use pam_ldap and pam_mount to auto-mount their home dirs, and console login works perfectly, mapping /home/MYDOMAIN/$USER

I get an xmessage pop up when I try 'startx' (or a graphical login using mdm) stating, "Unable to load failsafe session. Unable to determine failsafe session name. Possible causes: xfconfd isn't running (D-Bus setup problem), environment variable '$XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is set incorrectly (must inclue '/etc/'), or xfce4-session is installed incorrectly".

XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is set to /etc/xdg, and as far as I can tell D-Bus is working fine (local users can login fine).

If I create a ~/.xsession with the following content, I can login graphically but none of my session settings are saved obviously:

#!/usr/bin/env bash
rm -rf /home/MYDOMAIN/$USER/.config
/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/xfce4/xfconf/xfconfd &
xfce4-session

If I create a new ~/.xsession with this in it:

#!/usr/bin/env bas
xfce4-terminal

Then try to run '/usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/xfce4/xfconf/xfconfd' manually (and without first removing ~/.config), I get this error:

(xfconfd:4333): libxfce4util-WARNING **: Invalid XDG_DATA_HOME directory `/home/MYDOMAIN/my_user/.local/share', program may behave incorrectly.
(xfconfd:4333): libxfce4util-WARNING **: Invalid XDG_CONFIG_HOME directory `/home/MYDOMAIN/my_user/.config', program may behave incorrectly.
(xfconfd:4333): xfconfd-WARNING **: Unable to start backend "xfce-perchannel-xml": Unable to create configuration directory "(null)"
(xfconfd:4333): xfconfd-CRITICAL **: Xfconfd failed to start: No backends could be started

The error appears to be that xfconfd is not running, thus preventing xfce4-session from running. The directory '/home/MYDOMAIN/my_user/.config' exists and is owned by 'my_user'. If I remove it manually and start xfconfd manually, then xfce4-session starts (as in the .xsession above).

Has anyone used XFCE with an LDAP server for authenticating users before? Were there any problems? I've tried adding my LDAP users to all the same local groups my local user is part of, but nothing seems to work.

Does anyone have any suggestions?

Many thanks,

Tim