Hi fellow Salix users.
Yesterday a neighbor brought his computer to me "to fix it". He runs Salix 14.2 (I installed it some time ago). The problem was that Xfce won't start. Switching to console reveals X couldn't start because of a segmentation fault.
This is not a Salix bug or whatever. The user is not experienced on GNU/Linux, and I doubt he even knows what "sudo" is, but nevertheless he managed to somehow break Xfce. I don't know what he did, but anyway I had to fix it.
I switched to init 3, created a new user, and tried to startx from there; everything works. So I guessed something is wrong in user's ~/.config/xfce4. I renamed that directory, forcing Xfce to start with its default configuration, and indeed it works. This verifies that the user managed to mess up his ~/.config/xfce4.
What I want now is to reset Xfce to its default Salix state. Removing or renaming ~/.config/xfce4 resets Xfce to its default state, which is what you would see if you installed Xfce using Slackware or another third-party package; Salix logo, Salix menus, and several application icons are missing.
I'm sure the original Salix Xfce configuration is stored somewhere. My first guess was /usr/xdg. I tried to copy /usr/xdg/xfce4 to ~/.config/xfce4, but this is equivalent to removing ~/.config/xfce4: it resets Xfce to its default state. So my question is, where Salix stores its default configuration for Xfce? I tried to look up for files found in the default ~/.config/xfce4 created for a new user, but I couldn't find those elsewhere (my guess is they are compressed somewhere and Salix decompress them to ~/.config/xfce4 each time a new user is created).
P.S.: Apparently, I could take a backup of user's personal files, delete the user, and re-create it. This would do the trick, but since I had to bother with someone else's fault, at least I should learn something from it.
[Solved] Reset Xfce to its default Salix state.
[Solved] Reset Xfce to its default Salix state.
Last edited by Papasot on 7. Sep 2017, 19:48, edited 1 time in total.
A pleasant detail in this forum: several people pick a picture of their pet as their avatar. Who am I to do otherwise?
Re: Reset Xfce to its default Salix state.
Log in as user who has problem running xfce and type
Log out and login again.
Code: Select all
cp -R /etc/skel/* ~/
Re: Reset Xfce to its default Salix state.
You could even use (gtk)usersetup to delete the user, while not deleting the user files and then create the same user again. But yes, copying the files you want from /etc/skel is enough.
Re: Reset Xfce to its default Salix state.
So, THAT is where Salix stores its default user setup. I wonder why I couldn't find files similar to the ones in a new user's ~/.config/xfce4 when I did a system-wide search though; I should find them in /etc/skel/.config/xfce4. Anyway, worked - thank you djemos.djemos wrote:Log in as user who has problem running xfce and typeLog out and login again.Code: Select all
cp -R /etc/skel/* ~/
I realized usersetup does not delete the home directory of a user if you delete the user itself (somehow I assumed the opposite). But I realized that too late. The user's issue was already fixed, and I was just deleting a test user. Thank you for the tip, gapan.gapan wrote:You could even use (gtk)usersetup to delete the user, while not deleting the user files and then create the same user again. But yes, copying the files you want from /etc/skel is enough.
A pleasant detail in this forum: several people pick a picture of their pet as their avatar. Who am I to do otherwise?