On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 02:57:19PM -0800, dmacdoug wrote: > On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 07:50:36AM -0800, Mike Kupfer wrote: > > dmacdoug wrote: > > > > > sure enough there is no DISPLAY environment variable set. So I set it and > > > then the error message became: > > > > > > Failed to connect to session manager: Failed to connect to the session > > > manager: SESSION_MANAGER environment variable not defined > > > > > > I notice there are several other variables missing which do appear on > > > another machine with working xfce system, i.e. one still on stretch > > > distribution, such as XDG_MENU_PREFIX=xfce-, XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/etc/xdg > > > as well as SESSION_MANAGER and several others. > > > > Huh. How odd. I guess the next step would be to do "pgrep xf" on a > > working and non-working system and see what's not running on the > > non-working system. (In particular, is xfce4-session running?) Then > > make sure the corresponding packages are installed on the non-working > > system. > > > > What display manager is the non-working system using? > > > > Is /usr/bin/startxfce4 present on the non-working system? > > > It looks like lightdm is runnung on the system that is not working. > > I don't think there is any display manager on the working system. > On it, startx runs xinit which starts xfce4. > > startxfce4 is present on both systems. > > I did something yesterday and ended up restarting the system on > the non-working machine and mow it looks like xfce4 isn't running > on that machine. I don't have physical access to it till Sunday > afternoon. I'm currently working on it through a remote shell > and I'm not sure if or how I can start an X session on the > console from a remote shell so I think I'll have to continue this > next week. Then I'll compare them with pgrep and see what > differences there are. > > Until then, thanks for your help. > > To be continued. > Don >
I wish could explain what was wrong and what fixed it, but in any case, I can report that after installing all the latest package updates (it is the testing distribution) and restarting the system it seems like all of the XFCE4 processes that would be expected are running with the exception of xfdesktop, so I ran it from the command line in a shell and this time it ran just fine and, as you said, it runs automatically now whenever the system is restarted. When I updated the packages I noticed that a number of xfce4 packages updated. I don't know if any of the changes in them had anything to do with things working correctly afterwards or just coincidence. Thank you very much for your help. I know a little bit more about XFCE4 now than I did. Don
