Something (not PCmanFM) has become corrupted in LXDE (Solved)

[Howard]

I'm not sure what I have done, but the file manager has become corrupted.  It still sort of works, but the window margins and icons are different.  But there is no "close window" x in the top right corner and nothing seems to close the window (e.g. ctrl+w), the cursor is the two twirling circles instead of an arrow (suggesting that something is missing).  Some icons in the panel are different too.

There is only one desktop instead of two and the panel doesn't show open apps so there is no way to close an app - except that ctrl+w does seem to work sometimes.  I cannot resize windows by dragging the edges.  On the other hand most of the apps still work.

I've tried reinstalling pcmanfm after removing pcmanfm from .config - but that doesn't make any difference.

I had been exploring the options in "Configure your LXDesktop, but I didn't change anything as far as I know - maybe inadvertently.  It was mainly because I was trying to work out how to adjust the settings for a second display - a 1024x768 projector (the Dell min 10v display is 1024x600), for a talk I am giving tomorrow.  And until this happened I thought I'd sorted it out!

[melodie]

Hi,

Try creating a new user, then tell us if the new user still has the problem, if not, then just remove the whole ~/.config from the user number one and copy the whole ~/.config from the new user (you will just have to do a "chown -R user1.user1" on the ~/.config directory from user2 once copied there.

You could also do the copy directly from /etc/skel/.config. This way : move the .config from your user out of the way, from console:

$ mv .config .config-save  //it is saved, not removed !! incase you need some configs from another of your user application that is in there

$ cp -R /etc/skel/.config /home/user

Replace the words "user", "user1", "user2" by the relevant login name you use, whatever solution you decide to try.

[Howard]

Merci Melodie,

That pointed me in the right direction, although I didn't use the CLI.  

Copying over a basic .config folder solved the problem.  (Another way is to remove the .config folder and reboot - a new basic one is created.)  But then there was the bother of all those other (20+) config folders and files having to be recreated.

I initially thought it must be one of the basic folders that was causing the problem, but I found that overwriting all of them on top of my problem .config folder didn't solve the problem - so it must be something else.

Starting with the basic set I replaced lxpanel and lxterminal with no problems and had my preferred panel and terminal settings, I had to add in my OOo folders (I use the vanilla version not the one from the repo).  But so far everything else is OK, I've still got the old folder so I can rescue anything else as needed.

Whatever it was, it wasn't the pcmanfm stuff though!

[melodie]

I initially thought it must be one of the basic folders that was causing the problem, but I found that overwriting all of them on top of my problem .config folder didn't solve the problem - so it must be something else.

Hi,

For PCManFM the ~/.config subdirectories that have effect on it are pcmanfm and libfm. This information may help you.

Regards,
Mélodie

[Howard]

For PCManFM the ~/.config subdirectories that have effect on it are pcmanfm and libfm. This information may help you.

I don't think it was either of them as I still had the problem when they were replaced.  And there were problems with all the windows (e.g. Firefox) not just the pcmanfm ones.

[melodie]

And there were problems with all the windows (e.g. Firefox) not just the pcmanfm ones.

To deal with the windows you need to set up the windows of Openbox : this is in .config/openbox/rc.xml, and this is easy to manage from within the program obconf.

(Openbox configuration manager).