Fluxbox display Problems In DSL account


Forum: X and Fluxbox
Topic: Fluxbox display Problems In DSL account
started by: Sir Lunch-a-lot

Posted by Sir Lunch-a-lot on Nov. 26 2005,20:38
Alright, it all started when I got sick of having to reboot any time I wanted to switch from the DSL user to ROOT. So, I exited fluxbox, then typed logout, and logged in as root. Well, I was quite pleased when that worked. Then, I repeated the procedure to log back in as DSL. BUT, I hit a snag, sort of. Ever since I did that log out operation, every time I log into DSL, its all screwed up: There are only three entrys in the menu (I've looked at the menu file, and all the entrys are all there as they should be, but the menu on screen just isn't working). Also, the wallpaper is gone, and then nice light blue gradient colors for the window borders/headers and the menu coloration that was there when I installed it is gone. One other thing I noticed, since I had gone into the control panel to see if there was anything with the display that I could change, and I believe that it is under the SVESA button (which ever one has the various screen resolutions you can choose from), and under the DSL account, all but one of the buttons were gone (the one remaining button was not a resolution, as far as I recall).

These problems do not exist in the root account, or any other account that I create, just in the DSL account.

Does any body have any idea why this happened? More importantly, does anybody have any idea what I can do to fix it and possibly prevent it from happening again? I know that a simple re-install of the OS could fix it, but that's kind of like using torpedos to kill a mosquito. I can do that, but then I won't know a better way to fix the problem if it ever arises in the future.

Posted by crusadingknight on Nov. 27 2005,00:06
No idea what happened, but, whatever it was, broke your .fluxbox/init file. You'll have to do
Code Sample
cp /usr/share/fluxbox/init ~/.fluxbox/init
to restore the default init file.

This will, of course, reset you to the default theme and background, so it may be a good idea to create a ~/.fluxbox/init backup when everything's fixed.

Posted by hawki on Nov. 27 2005,14:23
Hi
I had a similar problem once.  I don't know exactly what I did to cause it but while logged on as root some file permissions were set so that user DSL no longer had read access to them.  The files are still there you just can't read them.
good  luck

Posted by roberts on Nov. 27 2005,17:05
Ah the dangers of running things as user root.
One should never run a system as root. That is the first rule of a Unix/Linux system.
You have changed file permissions and process owners by doing such.
You will have to chown, chgrp the files in /home/dsl back to their proper owners of dsl staff and not root root. I would do that while not in X, in fact I would do that at runlevel 2

Posted by Sir Lunch-a-lot on Nov. 29 2005,01:05
Actually, Roberts, I did not do anything that time I was logged in as root. I just logged straight back out again.

The problem layed in the screwed up init file, just like crusadingknight suggested. It was completely erased. So, I created a backup file in // for quick access and copied it to the dsl folder and restarted windows manager. It fixed the problem, but I wanted my other wallpaper, so I went into the dandy little program on the desktop (dsl control panel or whatever its called), and used it to change my wallpaper. Then, I don't know what posessed me to do this, I decided to check the init file again, and, lo and behold, it was blank again. I reran this test several times, and have confirmed that every time I change the wall paper it erases the contents of the init file. (I am using DSL 2.0, if anyone cares). So... unless someone fixes that problem, I'll have to change my wall paper the good old fasion way.

Anybody else find this problem in DSL 2? If it's not just me, who do I report such bugs to?

Posted by mikshaw on Nov. 29 2005,04:46
as far as I know, the wallpaper script rewrites .fluxbox/init whenever you apply an image change.  This would be the first place to look.  I haven't tested it, but i'll bet running that application as root, even once, would cause the temp file it uses to be owned by root, and therefore not useable by dsl afterward.  Having no temp file would mean it may overwrite init with nothingness.
Posted by Sir Lunch-a-lot on Nov. 29 2005,18:54
Do you mean if I just open the control panel as root it does this? Or do you mean if I run the wall paper changing script as root? Because I know for a fact that I did not change wall paper in the root account, but that is not to say that I did not open the wallpaper changing controls at some point as root.
Posted by crusadingknight on Nov. 29 2005,19:07
No idea, but, without even having to use root, mine was broken on DSL 1.5. This seems to occur anytime after internal fluxbox changes have been made, and forever thereafter (in my case, after I adjusted window title alpha, resized the panel, and moved the layer of the slit.)
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