This is my first ever post here, so Hello! ^_^

I have an annoying problem with xfdesktop. After doing a dist-upgrade, I locked my screen with xlock. I came back after some time and the computer freezed. I was a bit disappointed because it never happened before. Anyway I rebooted my PC and now xfdesktop works only if "None" or "Minimized applications icons" is chosen in Xfce Settings->Desktop. In "File/launcher icons" mode it doesn't run.

I started it from a console to see what it was, and it said this:

username@sntfapc001:~$ xfdesktop

** (xfdesktop:4815): CRITICAL **: xfdesktop_icon_peek_label: assertion `XFDESKTOP_IS_ICON(icon)' failed

** (xfdesktop:4815): CRITICAL **: xfdesktop_icon_set_position: assertion `XFDESKTOP_IS_ICON(icon)' failed

(xfdesktop:4815): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance

(xfdesktop:4815): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed

(xfdesktop:4815): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance

(xfdesktop:4815): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed

(xfdesktop:4815): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance

(xfdesktop:4815): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed

** (xfdesktop:4815): CRITICAL **: xfdesktop_icon_view_add_item: assertion `XFDESKTOP_IS_ICON_VIEW(icon_view) && XFDESKTOP_IS_ICON(icon)' failed

..then it hangs, and I have to type ^C to get back to prompt.


Any ideas? I dpkg-reconfigured xfdesktop4, even xfce4. I deleted my Desktop folder and restored it, I've cleared the cache... I really have no ideas left...

Thanks in advance,

I had a similar problem. In addition to the errors you received, I also saw the following error messages in ~/.xsession-errors:

(thunar:4646): thunar-vfs-WARNING **: Failed to connect to the HAL daemon: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.
Thunar: Failed to connect to the D-BUS session bus: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-mMwbmilSTz: Connection refused

I also did a dist-upgrade some time ago, but afterwards, always had uresolved dependency problems with several dbus packages.

What I did was to remove the 'dbus-1' package and replace it with the newer 'dbus' package. After that (and logging out then back in) my xfdesktop troubles went away.

Hope that helps!

Thank you.
I will try this as soon as I get home - I was starting to think this topic would remain unanswered forever.

Have you solved your problem yet? I am interested to know if my advice was useful or not!

Sorry for the delay. It worked! I had tried this before, but have found it not to work and then reinstalled dbus-1 BEFORE logging out... and it was so simple!
Thank you so much, this problem has been bothering me for months