[SOLVED] Thunar Starts Then Disappears

[jorel314]

I just installed Xubuntu 8.10 PPC on my iBook G4. Everything seemed to be working great, however, when I clicked "Places > File System" The Thunar file manager opened and then closed itself right away.

Same thing happens when I start Thunar directly from Applications menu. I can't browse my files.

Also, the Desktop icons and wallpaper dissappeared just leaving a blue background. Every other application runs fine when launched.

This is my third clean install attempt, and it acts like this every time. When the system starts after a clean install, the icons and desktop image are there. As soon as I launch Thunar, the desktop icons and image disappears and I can't manage my files.

Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks!

[iloveyouimissyou]

jorel314,

Just to let you know you are not the only one. I just installed Xubuntu 8.10 Intrepid (build from Oct. 30th, 2008) on my PPC iBook G4 (1.44GHz) and I'm having the same problem. I have reinstalled two times and the same thing happens. Double click on a folder or Hard Drive and the thunar file manager window for that item pops up for a quick blink of an eye and then it disappears.

I am typing this on my iBook with Xubuntu installed (the second time) and the icons on the desktop haven't disappeared yet... I'm sure they will soon, the previous install they disappeared rather quickly.

So anyways. I will post back here if I find out what is going on or if there is a solution.

Thanks,
Colin McArdell
www.colinmcardell.com

[melojo]

open a terminal and type

thunar

See what it is complaining about

[jorel314]

@Colin hopefully, we'll find a fix soon.

@melojo

Here is the message I get when I type Thunar from the command line:

(thunar:7513): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_drag_source_set_icon_name: assertion `site != NULL' failed
Segmentation fault

Any thoughts?

[iloveyouimissyou]

I tried "thunar" in a terminal with the results:

colin@goober:~$ thunar
Segmentation fault
colin@goober:~$

Bizarre.
I tried reinstalling Thunar and all Thunar related things from the Synaptic Package Manager with no change.

Thanks for the response!

Cheers,
Colin McArdell
www.colinmcardell.com

[jorel314]

I haven't found a fix for Thunar, so in the meantime, I installed an alternative file manager called PCMan.

More info here:
http://pcmanfm.sourceforge.net/

To install:
sudo apt-get install pcmanfm

It installs into:
Applications > System > PCMan File Manager"

After launching it, I went to:
Edit > Preferences > Desktop > Manage the desktop and show file icons

It's my first time using it, and it looks to be a lean and fast temporary solution.

[Leslie Viljoen]

I also have this problem, on a PPC Mac Mini with Intrepid. Installation went fine after the "modprobe ide-scsi" and adding the "nosplash" option to yaboot.conf (or else I just get a black screen, which I have to try and bypass by hammering on ctrl-alt-f1 during boot).

Here's my kernel:

uname -a
Linux maclin 2.6.25-2-powerpc #1 Tue Sep 30 14:49:00 UTC 2008 ppc GNU/Linux

Running Thunar I get "Segmentation Fault" mostly, but also a large list of Gtk-XYZ assertions failing.

Since XFCE seems to use Thunar to manage icons on the desktop, these die randomly, and I have to go back to settings and "allow XFCE to manage my desktop" to get them back (temporarily).

Perhaps relatedly, Celestia dies with an "X system error", Egoboo just quits to the logon screen, Funguloids runs but the music is loud white noise (strangely, since it doesn't even install on a PC)...

The Mac Mini is such a fantastic little computer, I had high hopes that Intrepid would finally be a decent OS for it! So I'm sad! Wireless is at last working great, after years of waiting and relentless hacking at it.

Anyway, for Thunar I am trying to build from source and debug it myself but I am a newb at packaging. I have managed to apt-get source Thunar and use uscan to update it to 0.9.91 and got debuild to apply patches, but don't want to download half the internet with pbuilder so I'm trying just a "./configure --enable-debug=full" and "make" to try and debug with. I'll report if I make any progress, please jump in if you have any advice!

tags: PPC powerpc macmini xubuntu xfce thunar segmentation fault

[Leslie Viljoen]

Wow, the Thunar I built doesn't segfault at all. Now I think we need someone who knows more about packaging to help!

I had to download quite a lot to build it, and I doubt this is going to help anyone as-is, but here's what I did:

(I use wajig but you can use "sudo apt-get" instead)

wajig source thunar
wajig install libexo-0.3-dev dpkg-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev fakeroot
wajig install debhelper devscripts

cd thunar-0.9.0
uscan
debuild -S -us -uc
./configure --enable-debug=all
make
cd thunar
./Thunar
[no segfault!]

Now the built Thunar's "about" menu shows version 0.9.0, so I don't really know if uscan changed the directory I was building in, or just created the Thunar-0.9.91.tar.bz2 file in the higher directory. So I don't know what version I compiled.

Trying to extract that 0.9.91 archive and run ./configure told me my libexo was too old, so I was perhaps just building 0.9.0 again - in which case, why didn't it segfault? Perhaps because of --enable-debug=full?
Well I have just rebuilt it again without that option, and it works too!

Doing the following seems to have now fixed Thunar for me:

mv /usr/bin/Thunar /usr/bin/Thunar.orig
cp ./Thunar /usr/bin

I can only imagine the bundled Thunar wasn't built properly. But perhaps you should give me a little time to try and reduce the above process to fewer steps (or post the binary) before you do it all.

[Leslie Viljoen]

Hmm, turns out the desktop icons disappearing aren't related to Thunar. That's xfdesktop segfaulting.

There must be some basic system incompatibility here. Perhaps all these apps were built on an older kernel and this kernel is causing them to segfault? Anyone wiser than me care to take a guess?

[Leslie Viljoen]

Ok, for Thunar you can skip the uscan. This seems to work:

apt-get install wajig
wajig install libexo-0.3-dev dpkg-dev libdbus-glib-1-dev fakeroot
wajig install debhelper devscripts
wajig source thunar

cd thunar-0.9.0
./configure
make
sudo make install

Now hide your system-installed Thunar:

sudo mv /usr/bin/Thunar /usr/bin/Thunar.orig

...and Thunar should work. I know it's a lot to download, I'd provide a proper package if I knew how to. I'll start reading about it.

For now though, I'm trying to build xfdesktop. It looks like the iso was another screw-up. Not that I'm ungrateful, this is a breeze compared to OSX and macports!