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Wallpaper Won't change

've just installed Vector Linux and everything is looking ok. And since I've just installed it, you will probably see a few questions by me for the next couple of days. Anyway the question I have for now is that I'm having trouble making the desktop background change. I went into Xfce-->Desktop and made sure the image show was checked and then I chose the wallpaper I wanted. I've picked the wallpaper from a folder I created and put a few other wallpapers in it. The background just won't change. I'm I overlooking something?

Have you tried typing xfdesktop in the terminal?

hi! i'm experiencing the same issue... :)

my xfce desktop wallpaper switcher is having no effect... it was working fine with xfce 4.2.2, but it stopped working when i upgraded to xfce 4.2.3.2...

i've done a ton of googling about this, and the best i could find is this bug report: http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1293

so i'm wondering if anyone else is experiencing the same issue, and also if you have a workaround you could share with me it would be greatly appreciated...

from what i understand by reading that bug report, a workaround could be to use the old ~/.config/xfce4/mcs_settings/desktop.xml file, but i lost it when i reinstalled my distro...

perhaps one of you is even skilled enough to post a patch to fix this at the source??

oh, and on a curious note, check-out this snip from the changelog for xfce 4.2.3.2... it shows that the xfdesktop code was indeed worked-on regarding this functionality, although obviously things didn't work-out as intended:

Quote:

xfdesktop:

* menueditor: allow right clicking on separators to delete them (fix #989).
* backdrop: if the currently-active backdrop is removed from the backdrop list, reload a new backdrop after saving the new list (bug #929).
* backdrop: fix problem where systemwide mcs_settings/desktop.xml isn't used (bug #1108).

okay so i went ahead and started using diff to see what the changes done to the xfdesktop source code during the last update looked like... it was much more than i expected:

Code:

bash-3.00# diff -Naur ./xfdesktop-4.2.2/ ./xfdesktop-4.2.3/ | wc -l

41775

one file drew my attention cuz of it's name (backdrop_settings.c)... so i diffed the ones from xfdesktop 4.2.2 and 4.2.3 and found it was an interesting one-liner... a had grepped for "desktop.xml" of course, which is how i ended-up here... at the top of the file it seems like RCFILE is given the value of "desktop.xml" or something... so anyways, i reverted the line in the file from 4.2.3 to the way it was in 4.2.2 without touching any of the other files...

i made a patch of it so i could share it here:

Code:

--- ./xfdesktop-4.2.3.orig/settings/backdrop_settings.c 2005-11-05 12:11:09.000000000 -0500

+++ ./xfdesktop-4.2.3/settings/backdrop_settings.c      2006-04-16 12:40:22.000000000 -0500

@@ -147,7 +147,7 @@

        gint i, j, nscreens, nmonitors;

        gchar setting_name[128];

 

-      rcfile = xfce_resource_lookup(XFCE_RESOURCE_CONFIG, RCFILE);

+      rcfile = xfce_resource_save_location(XFCE_RESOURCE_CONFIG, RCFILE, FALSE);

    mcs_manager_add_channel_from_file (mcs_plugin->manager, BACKDROP_CHANNEL,

                                      rcfile);

    g_free (rcfile);

i am not in any way, shape, or form a programmer, but it friggin' worked!!! :)

i can now change my wallpaper from the xfce desktop settings tool!! of course, i have no idea what side-effects my change will have, so if you wanna chime-in please don't be shy...

for reference, here's the link to the 4.2.2 tarball:
ftp://ftp.oregonstate.edu/pub/slackw...-4.2.2.tar.bz2

the 4.2.3 one is/was in -current at the time of this post, so it wouldn't be right to link it there... here it is from the xfce.org archive:
http://www.xfce.org/archive/xfce-4.2...p-4.2.3.tar.gz