I'm locked out of XFCE...

[SantaFe]

Don't know quite how this happened, well yes I do. I was logged into my XFCE session, and decided to try to change the window decoration at the top of each window, was tired of the default & wanted to see different ones.

So anyway I went into Window-Manager and clicked on the first one shown. Didn't like that one so I clicked on two more. The fourth one I clicked on suddenly made my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Beta 2 system reboot. Not only that, after I entered my login info, it reboots right after the splash screen (the one with the spinning cog & the mouse running inside it) finishes. PooP, back to the Dell boot up screen then the Login screen. Lucky for me GNOME was still an option so I chose that, and ran Synaptic to see if perhaps removing XFWM and the Xubuntu packages & reinstalling them would work.

Sadly it still dies after the XFCE splash screen, but now it goes right to the login screen.

Should I just go back into Synaptic & remove everything connected to XFCE & then repick them? Or is there some text file that has the window manager themes listed & hopefully a backup of the original one in case the one I picked was one I added instead of a system supplied one?

[Simian Man]

This has happened to me when creating my own Xfwm themes. It's possible to segfault the window manager with a badly done theme. I'm kind of shocked that Xubuntu came with such a bug however.

There is a text file somewhere under ~/.config that stores your current xfwm theme. I am away from my Linux machine now, but I will post the location tomorrow if nobody has by that time.

[MooPi]

Found the .config file.

~/.config/xfce4/xconf/xfce-perchannel.xml/xsettings.xml

Login to recovery mode and edit this xml.

[Simian Man]

Actually the file MooPi gave contains the information for your Gtk+ theme, not your xfwm window manager theme. Edit the following file instead:

~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfwm4.xml

And find this line:

 <property name="theme" type="string" value="Simian"/>

Where value is equal to the window theme you chose which broke everything. Change it to some safe theme which you have installed. I don't know which themes Xubuntu comes with as I'm using Fedora, but you can do:

ls -l /usr/share/themes/* | grep -B 3 xfwm

Which will list all of the themes you have installed which come with an xfwm theme. You can try "Xfce", "Sassandra", or "Redmond" which will probably be there.

[SantaFe]

Hmmmm.... used root terminal & tried this:

root@santafe-desktop:~# 
root@santafe-desktop:~# cd ~/.config/
root@santafe-desktop:~/.config# ls
enchant  qtcurve  Trolltech.conf
root@santafe-desktop:~/.config#

Can't seem to find /XFCE4/ anywhere. Somethings messed up. May just reinstall the Xubuntu 10.04 Beta2 cd I burned & try again.

Thanks for the ideas though.

[Simian Man]

You shouldn't do that as root. When root cd's into "~" it will go into roots home directort (/root) which is not where your user settings are stored. Do those commands as your non-priveleged user and you should find it.

[SantaFe]

You shouldn't do that as root. When root cd's into "~" it will go into roots home directort (/root) which is not where your user settings are stored. Do those commands as your non-priveleged user and you should find it.

Okay, thanks. But the point is kinda moot. While I was in GNOME I was looking in /usr/bin/ & found xfce4-settings-manager, which I right clicked on & picked Execute. Up popped the XFCE Settings window which had the Window Manager icon. Needless to say I was ecstatic. Picked one I KNEW worked and am back up. Why didn't I think of this in the first place? So I guess this one can be called Solved.

[Simian Man]

Okay, thanks. But the point is kinda moot. While I was in GNOME I was looking in /usr/bin/ & found xfce4-settings-manager, which I right clicked on & picked Execute. Up popped the XFCE Settings window which had the Window Manager icon. Needless to say I was ecstatic. Picked one I KNEW worked and am back up. Why didn't I think of this in the first place? So I guess this one can be called Solved.

Ha ha, that is an easier solution isn't it?