LinuxQuestions.org - Lost my XFCE desktop on Slack 12

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Lost my XFCE desktop on Slack 12

Just installed Slack 12 yesterday, was messing around with getting ALSA configured and needed something to test sound with, so I popped in a DVD that containing some AVI versions of a popular sci-fi TV show. XFCE detected the DVD in the drive and put a "New Disc" icon on my desktop. I double-clicked it and got an error message that "A security policy in place prevents this sender from sending this message to the recipient, see message bus configuration file (rejected message had interface "org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume"..." and I'm not sure of the rest :)

Since I'm not logged into X as root, I figured this to be a permission problem. So, I (while still in X, which was maybe a mistake, read on) opened up /etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf and changed 'plugdev' to 'users' in the below section:

Code:

  <!-- Allow members of the 'plugdev' group to mount volumes -->

  <policy group="users">

    <allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume"/>

    <allow send_interface="org.freedesktop.Hal.Device.Volume.Crypto"/>

  </policy>

Saved the file off somewhere, then su-ed, made a backup of the original and copied the changed file to /etc/dbus-1/system.d/hal.conf. As soon as I did this, all windows (except Firefox, oddly enough) in my XFCE session closed, my XFCE desktop went from the default blue to black, and all the icons on it disappeared. The right-click application menu wouldn't appear either.

Figuring this to be bad, I did the Ctrl-Alt-Bksp thing, then completely logged out of X and restarted. Same problem.

I logged out of X again and from a console su-ed and replaced the modified hal.conf with the original. No good.

Next, I figured maybe the udev daemon needed to be restarted, so I did a kill -HUP on it.

Now I'm posting here from XFCE with my black, icon-less, application menu-less desktop wondering how in the world I could have broken things so badly (I was being so careful, dammit!:rolleyes:), and wondering what else I could try to fix them?

Help!

Have you tried changing it back?

Probably an obvious questions.

I don't know exactly what is wrong but maybe reinstalling the relevant packages will help...

Might want to change that back.

Then add plugdev to users instead. Look at this thread:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=566862

I have not lost my xfce desktop, but I have lost my panels a few times. That was on a clean install of Slackware 12.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hern_28

Probably an obvious questions.

Of course I changed it back. I actually made a copy of the file before I edited it just in case I screwed it up in the process. /me no idiot :) "Restoring" that backup copy didn't help any.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hern_28

Then add plugdev to users instead. Look at this thread:

Taking a look, but since hal.conf is back to it's default state and stuff is still broken, I dunno. That's probably the way I should have attacked it in the first place though, so thanks for the suggestion :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ilgar

I don't know exactly what is wrong but maybe reinstalling the relevant packages will help...

Blarg. Hope it doesn't come to that. Strikes me as a Windows solution -- Broke it? Re-install it!

Quote:

Originally Posted by pete_bogg

I have not lost my xfce desktop, but I have lost my panels a few times.

Panels are fine, it's just the desktop (xfdesktop?) is gone. Hasn't occurred to me to see if it's a running process or not while I'm in X... I'll check that later when I get home.

You could try to remove the xfce4 cache. Take a look in ~/.cache or remove that completely.

I'm not sure if I understood your post above completely, especially the part about plugdev group. You SHOULD add the user to groups "plugdev" AND "cdrom" as it is covered in the linked thread.

Odd.. xfdesktop was not running. From a console I did xfdesktop & and got a warning message from Thunar about not having permission to contact Hal (can't recall the exact message, didn't save it unfortunately). My desktop came back. Logged out of X and back in and the desktop is still there, so the immediate problem is solved, but I don't know the cause. Now to work on groups :)

argh. :mad: Now I seem to have broken the automount for the CD and DVD drives. I don't get the nice desktop icon when I insert a DVD and it doesn't appear under /media or /mnt. That is all the dvd* folders there are empty...

Again, hal.conf is *exactly* as it was when slack was installed... is there a log file somewhere I should be looking at?

Sorry to spam my own thread, but I added myself to the plugdev group:

bash-3.1# groups lamont
users plugdev

I still do not have any sort of auto-mounting, like I did once, just once, last night.

I get this warning message from xfdesktop:
** (xfdesktop:13013): WARNING **: Unable to initialise D-Bus. Some xfdesktop features may be unavailable.

(xfdesktop:13013): thunar-vfs-WARNING **: Failed to connect to the HAL daemon: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: Connection refused

EDIT --
I don't think this is a permission issue. doing xfdesktop & as root gives me the same connection refused error:

(xfdesktop:13013): thunar-vfs-WARNING **: Failed to connect to the HAL daemon: Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: Connection refused

The messagebus service does not appear to be running. Start/restart it.