how to get rid of persistent fragment on screen

Alok Rai · 04-14-2016, 01:20 AM

I run Linux Mint 16 Petra on one of my computers. A few days back, a small patch, perhaps a fragment from somewhere, showed up on my screen, and refused to go away. I could move it around with the pointer and the shift key, but no matter where I moved it, it was still in the way of something. I tried power-cycling the computer, but the patch returned each time. Any ideas as to how one can get rid of it?

Envoy of Goats · 04-14-2016, 03:01 AM

If you can identify what process controls it you could simply kill that process.

Code:

kill -15 SOME_PID_HERE

or the same thing with 9 instead of 15 if that does not work. 15 asks the process to stop gracefully and 9 forcefully ends the process.

I suspect the harder part of this will be identifying the source of the "patch".

Do you know what update caused the patch to appear?
What does it look like?
Do other users see it?
It sounds like it is always on the top layer, is this accurate?

Alok Rai · 04-14-2016, 03:19 AM

Yes, always on the top layer.

And it is there immediately on booting up, before I have initiated anything. And it is not related to any update, as far as I know.

As for what it looks like, it looks like an SD card, is white in colour, and about the same size. And I am the only "user" on my machine.

average_user · 04-14-2016, 03:27 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Envoy of Goats

I suspect the harder part of this will be identifying the source of the "patch".

xprop utility can be used for that. Just start xprop inside terminal, click inside a window and xprop will display a lot of info about this window together with its name and a its owner process ID. When we'll know the program name and PID it will be easier to learn when it starts and who is his parent.

Alok Rai · 04-14-2016, 04:21 AM

Many thanks. I did the xprop, then "killed" the only PID that I could see in the output - and, voila, the patch is gone! Amazing community!

Alok Rai · 04-14-2016, 04:30 AM

Oops! Something rather worse than the irritating patch has happened! I "killed" 1428, but it seems that I killed the XFCE panel as well. When I try and get to the programs window, I get a message "Failed to send D-Bus message / No running instance of xfce4-panel was found"

How can I reverse the "kill"???

average_user · 04-14-2016, 04:50 AM

You can't reverse "kill". You can re-start xfce4-panel manually. If an icon will show up again you can be sure it comes from xfce4-panel.

Alok Rai · 04-14-2016, 04:52 AM

Two questions, please. One: how can I start xfce4-panel manually? Two, once I start it, will it reappear automatically every time I boot up?

average_user · 04-14-2016, 04:54 AM

1. type 'xfce4-panel' in terminal
2. it should, it doesn't matter that you just killed it because you didn't modify startup scripts

Alok Rai · 04-14-2016, 04:58 AM

Did, did! Of course, the irritating "patch" has appeared as well - but I guess I will live with that. Many thanks.

Alok Rai · 04-14-2016, 12:33 PM

The way I got rid of the "persistent patch" was by executing a "kill 1428" from the command line - which got rid of the patch alright - but it also killed the xfce4-panel! So my current "solution" is to move the patch to a corner, because of course I can't work without the xfce4-panel! But if there is a better solution....

average_user · 04-15-2016, 03:05 AM

You need to ask XFCE guys about this, it may be XFCE feature, a bug or a misconfiguration on your side. Was this patch present on the fresh install or did it show up later?

Alok Rai · 04-15-2016, 05:55 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by average_user

You need to ask XFCE guys about this, it may be XFCE feature, a bug or a misconfiguration on your side. Was this patch present on the fresh install or did it show up later?

I have been using the XFCE for years. This "patch" showed up only recently. And, as I discovered, it disappears when the xfce4-panel disappears - and reappears along with it!

DavidMcCann · 04-15-2016, 11:32 AM

I wonder if this is an icon for something in Xfce. Does it do anything if you left or right click on it? Is there an entry relating to is in the Desktop directory?

Weapon S · 04-15-2016, 03:06 PM

Sounds like a bug in X. I believe the panel's "window" is only as big as the panel; screen outside of that shouldn't be affected.