Spacefm

[Taco.22]

To any new users reading this thread:    
You should not use your main/production install for testing new software. If you are going to test, use a test / throw-away install. Installing from outside sources renders your system officially unsupported. If you know how to fix your system, this will not be a big problem for you. If not, a test install can be formatted without loss of your data.    

Maybe this is something that should be encouraged.  I know the "Advanced Users Section" has a warning - "Those who wish to have advanced linux discussions are free to do it here. Those with less knowledge of linux and its mechanics are discouraged from trying what they learn here without assistance from those who know".   However, what if it was made clear to people that a "test system" and a bit of knowledge could put them in the experimental side of things, and what if directions on how to set up for that were provided somewhere on the forum.  Information on how to create a dual boot setup, or create a testbed in VBox - a sticky that lays out the parameters for safe experimentation, with instructions and suggestions.
 
Allow me the indulgence to quote -

“Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.”
― Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

I like boats, love boats, particularly small boats, small wooden boats, clinker especially - ahh, but I digress.  I also like computers, and messing about with them.  Hours of entertainment in messing about with them.  I am not an Advanced User.  I have just broken so many systems so often that I have got good at fixing them.  Oh, and knowing not to break them.  And in the end, how to build them.  Most times!  Not always!!  But it is all for fun.  Although it may not seem so at 1.30am when you realise that you probably SHOULDN'T have done that last tweak!?!

So how about it - somewhere that users, new or otherwise, can park for a bit, don their "L" plates, adjust the seatbelt, check the mirrors, and then go for a spin.  
I'm sorry if this is a bit longwinded, and maybe slightly off topic, but seemed a suitable moment to post .  By the way, happy to help out on this.

Taco.22

[Neal ManBear]

Taco.22,     
My post was intended to discourage new users from using their main/production installation for testing purposes. It was not intended to discourage them from testing.     
Installing from outside sources renders a system unsupported, therefore a dedicated testing install is always recommended, even for advanced users.     

It is our policy to discuss "official" PCLinuxOS tests on our testers mailing list, not here on the forum. Tests such as this one, i.e. Spacefm, can be discussed here in Advanced Users only.     

If you want to write up such a how-to as you describe, post it here in Advanced Users.     

[Taco.22]

I have installed onto a clean version of Bonsai Archie's 0.6.2 without the hal option - same unmount issue.  I then applied Melodie's edit on /etc/polkit-1/localauthority/50-local.d/55-myconf.pkla, logged out, and now I have a full device contextual menu and mount/unmount.  I have just set up a fresh install of LXDE, so I will also have a try on that.

[Taco.22]

OK, installed Archie's 0.6.2-no-hal into LXDE.  No partitions or devices showed at all in the devices pane, although everything was accessable through /media.  Tried Melodie's edit but no change.  Uninstalled and installed 0.6.2-hal.  Everything appeared in the devices pane, with the right-click menu limited to mount/unmount.

Both the OB Bonsai and LXDE were 32bit.  Stuck with -hal?    

[Archie]

OK, installed archie's 0.6.2-no-hal into LXDE.  No partitions or devices showed at all in the devices pane, although everything was accessable through /media.  Tried Melodie's edit but no change.  Uninstalled and installed 0.6.2-hal.  Everything appeared in the devices pane, with the right-click menu limited to mount/unmount.

Both the OB Bonsai and LXDE were 32bit.  Stuck with -hal?   

I can confirm that it is the same behavior on Minime 2012.12 - no HAL; no mount/umount. We are stuck with HAL. I still haven't looked at 0.6.3 or if there are any changes. I will try and squeeze it in ... take a look and see if there are any improvements.

Peace and much respect,
Archie

[Taco.22]

I can also confirm Melodie's observation that the entries in /media don't clear on unmount.  They just keep on piling up!  Also I couldn't test the potential conflict with Aurora on LXDE as it doesn't have it as a default option.  That could be an option for OB.

Silly question ... what is stationetray?

Sorry Archie - should have answered this earlier.  Oh, and not a silly question!  Stalonetray is a "stand-alone-tray" that can be used where no panel is installed - perfect for minimal setups like OB and others.  Things like volume control, clock, network or clipboard critters can live there.  Openbox has a dock that can house these things, and it only occupies a small corner of screen-estate.  I'm just running it for the fun of it - normally on my Bonsai "desktop" all I have is conky.   

[melodie]

Hi,
It is pretty natural to see we are stuck with hal. Most packages are tied to it in PCLinuxOS. Add to this we haven't had much time to look what the differences are between the system with HAL and the one with 'udev - upower - polkit' not sure if I don't forget something...

I think that to be freed from it is has to be a job initiated by the Boss, and thought by him. Else, it's not more difficult to configure the polkit files to get about the same as before : easy to go for the end users/beginners, because there is much doc on how to do that now. Still, we need to wait for Texstar to decide weather or not the time has come. It might be a job as big as it has been with the move to a new Xorg, or new kernels... not sure, maybe even bigger when we see the number of packages involved.

Also one thing : the devs at freedesktop etc... do new things, bring new ways, then give up on the new ways and suddenly bring other things (the ConsoleKit novelties since a few years is an example : I have seen a few new howto's on wikis, and once I started to understand the surface of the former one, changes had already been done, so it needs again time to revisit it from the bottom)

For the time being, I think that if we find the hal version working for us, and the non-hal conflicting we might want to give up on the non-hal version until things change here too. Else, I would not want to implement Spacefm in public releases. It is nice for advanced people who know what they need in it, but for most people it displays too many submenus, right-click menus and right-click submenus. Else than that, it works better than the actual PCManFM. I would like IgnorantGuru and pcman to be presented each other...

[melodie]

Hi,
I have switched from the version 0.6.2 without hal to the version 0.6.2 hal enabled. I am meeting with annoyance in nautilus which can't open a device now (it's a usb key) and same in pcmanfm : the older version 0.9.3 which was working well up to now. nautilus still sees the internal and usb, pcmanfm does not see any anymore.

The symptoms I noticed are : I didn't have a session listed anymore, ck-list-session would not return anything. haldaemon : not even started at boot, whereas it should be, but out of any special experience I have met with this quite a few times so this is not a surprise.

I tried restarting haldaemon and messagebus, rebooted after I removed fully spacefm (rpm -e + config files, after a complete updatedb + locate).

I also had lxpolkit installed, which is not necessary as long as I use polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1. I wonder if there was not a conflict, because I could not get it to start, had an error message in console. (when trying to start it, it said could not find a cookie session). I uninstalled lxpolit and rebooted, since then I have a session listed correctly, and polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 listed when I seek for it in the processes running.

For now I have hand installed the new spacefm version from the sources, at the moment it works well too. There is one thing I am astonished about : for the changes between versions I had removed all remaining files:

/etc/spacefm and the files under ~/.config : but the newer spacefm didn't prompt for some root informations, whereas it had done it, the first time I had installed it. Any thoughts on this ?

/PS : for this last one, I found I can open a root window from the menus, so it seems not necessary anymore to have it prompted to be written in /etc/spacefm.

[Neal ManBear]

You can not run lxpolkit and polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 at the same time. Didn't you participate in the discussion about this not long ago?     

[melodie]

I run one only at a time from the .config/openbox/autostart.sh file. I assumed that if one was there lxpolkit would not be started. It's start file is located under /etc/xdg/autostart. I am not sure it had not been started from there anyhow : so in doubt I uninstalled it. I have no way to check if it was conflicting or not, all I can say is none at all was running. The discussion I participated to : I opened a thread and asked why lxpolkit had become a dependency to pcmanfm and Texstar said that it would not hurt to have it in (and is small and light). A day or so later pcmanfm was updated and the the dependency to lxpolkit was not there anymore. I don't know more about it.

[Neal ManBear]

There were other threads - lxpolkit and lxdecc. Any road, yes, lxpolkit does autostart and yes, polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 autostarts. They conflict. You should use one or the other but not both.     

[Archie]

Downloaded 0.6.3, quickly skimmed through the changelog ... and thought, Taco.22 and melodie can sure use this ... so let my PCLinuxOS heart run wild (is there a song about that?) ... Anyway, all it would take was changing one digit on the spec and running rb pclos-spacefm.spec ... and I would be so selfish not to do it.

Have fun testing. And let me know if you still run on issue. The app works good on KDE Minime 2010.12 mount/umount ... none of the issues that were describe earlier.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32533806/spacefm-0.6.3-1_archie_2012.i586.rpm
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/32533806/spacefm-0.6.3-1_archie_2012.x86_64.rpm

@Taco.22. It was your request so I'll let you decide whether I should send this to Neal. IMO it's as good as it gets.

Peace and much respect,
Archie

[melodie]

@Taco.22. It was your request so I'll let you decide whether I should send this to Neal. IMO it's as good as it gets.

Peace and much respect,
Archie

Archie, let's not get in a hurry, and have a long time testing it. I would like to be sure it doesn't interfere with the ability to have the same mount and unmount features in the other file managers. ie : with Dolphin can you still have normal mount and unmount of internal partitions and external drives ? usb sticks, usb hdd... ?

I might have a few installs not used at the moment where I can do further tests, but I may not have enough free time within the next days for this additional task. Maybe Taco.22 ?

Thanks for your new packages ! (And a stupid question : with or without hal enabled ?)

Regards,
Mélodie

[Taco.22]

It's the -hal version, Melodie.
Also, I haven't found any conflict between Spacefm, Thunar and Pcmanfm on the same OB install.  I didn't notice any conflict on LXDE either, but I would have to confirm that.

[Archie]

@Taco.22. It was your request so I'll let you decide whether I should send this to Neal. IMO it's as good as it gets.

Peace and much respect,
Archie

Archie, let's not get in a hurry, and have a long time testing it. I would like to be sure it doesn't interfere with the ability to have the same mount and unmount features in the other file managers. ie : with Dolphin can you still have normal mount and unmount of internal partitions and external drives ? usb sticks, usb hdd... ?

I might have a few installs not used at the moment where I can do further tests, but I may not have enough free time within the next days for this additional task. Maybe Taco.22 ?

Thanks for your new packages ! (And a stupid question : with or without hal enabled ?)

Regards,
Mélodie

Here's a stupid answer in a form of a question. Which one (without or whit hal) are we getting better results?