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SOLVED: Wheezy- No running instance of xfce4-panel was found

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ComputerBob
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SOLVED: Wheezy- No running instance of xfce4-panel was found

#1 Post by ComputerBob »

I posted this same issue in the Xfce support forums this morning. So far, no replies.

This morning, using Synaptic, I finally upgraded my main Wheezy Xfce 4.6 computer to Xfce 4.8. There were 225 upgrades, plus 33 new things to be installed.

It has been about 2 weeks since I last fully upgraded that system, so I'm sure that not all of today's upgrades were directly related to Xfce 4.8.

I waited to upgrade as long as I did because Wheezy's been getting a steady stream of Xfce 4.8 upgrades for the past several days -- I wanted to wait until that stream stopped, to reduce the chances that I would run into an upgrade problem that was on the verge of being fixed.

The only issue I had was that, in the middle of the configuration step (for lib6, I think), it asked me to either stop or restart xscreensaver before continuing (so that I wouldn't get locked out of the current session), so I completely stopped xscreensaver.

No other issues, error messages or prompts, which surprised me, because I was expecting it to ask me whether I wanted to install a default panel or upgrade my existing Xfce 4.6 panel.

When the upgrade finished, my desktop background and panel looked exactly the same as they had before the upgrade. I had (wrongly?) expected that at least the new panel would look different.

So I clicked on the "Quit" icon at the right end of the (only, bottom) panel, to shut down and restart my system, thinking that then I would see the new Xfce 4.8 panel.

But, when I clicked on the "Quit" icon, instead of seeing the familiar Quit/Restart/Logoff dialog box, an error popped up:
Failed to quit the panel.
No running instance of xfce4-panel was found.

A Google search told me that a bug was reported about that same issue affecting Ubuntu Natty several months ago -- but I haven't seen any reports about it or published fixes for it re: Wheezy.

So I'm using my other PC (Xfce 4.6) to post this message.

Now I'm afraid to use my Xfce 4.8 PC and -- since I don't know what's wrong with it -- I don't want to mess around with it and possibly make it worse.

At this point, I don't even want to try using the Xfce menu to log off or restart it, because -- from what I've read about other people's Xfce 4.8 panel problems in the past several months -- I don't know if the panel will even be there afterward.

This is probably caused by something minor -- but to me, it's something major, because I don't know what else it might be affecting, so it keeps me from trusting or using that PC until I know specifically what to do to troubleshoot and fix it.
Last edited by ComputerBob on 2011-05-15 22:18, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Wheezy - No running instance of xfce4-panel was found

#2 Post by secipolla »

Relax, most probably nothing happened.
Only that may have happened because you upgraded Xfce from within a running Xfce session (that's why I go back to the console in these cases). You see, while the files were updated the old apps were cached in memory so these things happen.
Just boot your brand new Xfce 4.8 and see how it goes.

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Re: SOLVED: Wheezy- No running instance of xfce4-panel was f

#3 Post by ComputerBob »

Thank you! You were right!

Holding my breath, I shut down my PC via the Xfce Menu; when I restarted it, Xfce 4.8 gave me a choice to either migrate my existing panel settings, start with the default panel settings, or start with one blank panel.

Having read about people running into problems with migrating their existing panel settings, I chose "default," thinking that that would give me Debian's one default panel at the bottom with several icons already in it.

Instead, "default" gave me one 100%-width top panel (Panel 1) with only a few icons in it, and a much narrower-but-taller, "Mac-looking" centered bottom panel (Panel 2) with four or five big icons in it.

Wishing that I had chosen "one blank panel" instead of "default," I deleted the bottom panel, moved the top panel down to the bottom, and then meticulously added and configured all of my normal panel icons into it.

I also discovered that the color style ("Xfce") that I had been using in Xfce 4.6 gave me black window title bars with white text, but invisible upper-right-corner icons in Xfce 4.8. I fixed that by going to Xfce Menu > Settings > Appearance > Style and changing it to "Xfce-4.6". Now my window title bars are blue again.

A couple of shut-downs and restarts confirmed that everything is configured and working correctly.

A few minutes ago, I went back to the Xfce support forums and posted a link to this thread, in case anyone there is interested.
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Re: SOLVED: Wheezy- No running instance of xfce4-panel was f

#4 Post by secipolla »

Migrating the old configs is fine too. Most 'problems' probably derive from people running Xfce already prior to that as opposed to doing it after a fresh boot.
As for the default, the Debian maintainer must have chosen that so as to show some of the panel's features. I personally like the bottom launcher bar but I set it to autohide.

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Re: SOLVED: Wheezy- No running instance of xfce4-panel was f

#5 Post by ComputerBob »

Every time I start Thunar for the first time after a new boot, it takes about 30 seconds to appear, and then about 10 seconds later, a second instance of it appears.

After that, it appears instantly every time I start it during that same session. But if I shut-down or restart my PC, it again takes 30 seconds to start up, with a second instance of it appearing about 10 seconds later.

Apparently, many people are experiencing this same problem.

On advice in a different forum, I deleted the ~/.config/Thunar folder and restarted my PC, but that didn't help -- it created a new Thunar folder, but the long delay and the double-Thunars are still there every time I run Thunar for the first time in a session.

(edit) I split this issue off into a separate thread: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=64190
I also posted it in the Xfce support forums: http://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=5959
Last edited by ComputerBob on 2011-05-16 03:36, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: SOLVED: Wheezy- No running instance of xfce4-panel was f

#6 Post by secipolla »

Well actually I recently reinstalled my system and didn't reinstall Xfce yet. That said, I had no problems at all with the migration, but my setup was quite lean.
All in all I'm quite sure you should look at Thunar's extensions or something related. Thunar itself worked pretty fine for me (but I had only the volman and the archives extensions, I think).

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