“icewm –notify” wreaking havoc

[Member blur13]

Booting up into antix 19.4 (distro-upgrade from installed 19.3) with rox-icewm results in desktop background and conky. No mouse. No keybindings work. Cant open a menu. From conky I can see that memory usage is at 80%, and the CPU is running high at about 80%. I can use ctrl+alt+F2 to access a console and run htop. The command “/usr/bin/icewm –notify” is the culprit. I cant kill it. I can make it stop, so CPU usage drops to 0% but the memory usage remains at 80%. The only thing that was different, that I can think of, was that I had an uptime of 10 days before shutting down, and when booting up antiX performed some sort of check, that it periodically does. I’ve tried restarting several times, but the problem remains. Anyone got any ideas? Or should I just wipe the disk clean and reinstall?

From the console I ran “# pkill -9 -t tty7”, that seemed to shut down the whole icewm session and presented me with a login screen, hit F1 to log in to rox-jwm and there everything seems to be fine. Log out and into rox-ice I get the same problem. Same with just ice, min-ice and space-ice (although I get a cursor with space-ice CPU and memory is just crazy).

should I try apt purge icewm and then install again?

[Member Xecure]

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Before reinstalling icewm, try to replace the icewm configuration with the defaults. Go to tty1 or tty2, as you did before, login as your normal user, and backup your current icewm configuration first.
mv ~/.icewm ~/.icewm-backup
And copy the icewm defaults
cp -r /etc/skel/.icewm ~/.icewm
stop the session by restarting the login manager

sudo service slim stop
sudo service slim start

and see if it logs in properly. If it does, then the problem is related to a mis-configuration in your icewm files. You can restore some of the files in ~/.icewm-backup little by little until you find the problematic configuration file.

If the problem still occurs, then reinstall icewm, as you said before.
sudo apt update && sudo apt install --reinstall icewm icewm-common

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member blur13]

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Hi Xecure,

Still having some problems. Starting up the usual way leaves me with a blank screen and a humming CPU. Checking htop in the console reveals “desktop-session” going haywire, its constantly respawning. I tried deleting it, ie the file itself to stop it from doing that. Obviously not a a great idea so I restored “desktop-session” by copying the file from another antiX install and chmod 755 and placing it in /usr/local/bin, where I think it belongs. It’s still doing the respawning, here is the log file:

desktop-session: Window Manager not found to be running after 20 checks
desktop-session: Window Manager not found to be running after 20 checks
desktop-session: Currently the desktop environment will not start 😛
desktop-session: Currently the desktop environment will not start 😛
desktop-session: started Sun 17 Oct 2021 07:32:21 AM CEST start_time: 125.85
desktop-session: Give Up Time:12609
desktop-session: Give Up Time:12611
desktop-session: pid: 18409
desktop-session: logging to: /home/$USER/.desktop-session/log
desktop-session: Raw code passed ”
desktop-session: running on_exit code
desktop-session: running on_exit code
desktop-session: running on_exit code
desktop-session: running on_exit code
desktop-session: running on_exit code

“desktop-session: running on_exit code” repeats for a couple of pages

Is there some default “desktop-session” file in etc/skel I can chmod and put in the $PATH?

I’m now currently booting into run level 3, and when I use “startx” it starts the display server and runs icewm. I’ve restored the default settings for icewm, as per your instructions. Before I restored the default settings, starting icewm this way would result in the same error that started this whole thing. So the icewm settings are probably to blame.

At this point I’m close to giving up and just reinstalling a fresh antiX. But then I think of all the customization I’ve done, compiled programs, etc, and shudder. Maybe I could use “startx”, run my startup script manually in the terminal, set up a desktop background with “feh”, turn on conky, and then never reboot, always suspend 🙂

[Member ModdIt]

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Hi, blur 13,
you have a .desktop session with startup file in your home, you can try replacing that. There is also an icewm/startup.

I am guessing that something is broken in your home not in any base files. Maybe rename any possible candidates and copy in fresh known working files
until you, hopefully get a working desktop..

[Member Xecure]

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I think there is probably something wrong with icewm itself, as desktop-session properly works underjwm.
For now go back to using jwm.
Change the antiX repo mirror to a different one (in case a corrupted icewm is being downloaded from there), then sudo apt update and then
sudo apt purge icewm icewm-common
pay attention and copy or write down the names of other possible packages that want to uninstall with icewm (like icewm-base-themes-antix, icewm-icons-papirus-antix, icewm-themes-antix and desktop-defaults-icewm-antix).
Then install icewm again, this time from the repo
sudo apt install icewm icewm-common desktop-defaults-icewm-antix
Test to see if you can switch to an icewm session and see if it is fixed. If it is, then restore your icewm-backup folder and log out and log in, to see if the works properly.

If there is still a problem only with icewm, and other desktop-sessions work properly, we will try exploring a different path.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member blur13]

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In the end, nothing was working, not JWM either. It simply was not logging in, and the desktop-session executable was stuck in a loop.

Incredibly enough, I seem to have fixed it. Reading through the desktop-session executable in the usr/local/bin I was able to find what caused the specific error code in the log file, and why it was repeating.

~/.desktop-session/desktop-code.0

that file contained “@default”, not sure how that happened in the first place. Anyways, changed it to “icewm” and desktop-session is not in an endless loop anymore, and I’m in icewm and everything is back to normal.

As usual, thanks for your help Xecure and ModdIt!

I’ve learned a lot about X in the process, so it wasnt a total waste. I’ve also learned a lot about how antiX is set up. Its quite interesting. I think my next project will be to install the smallest ISO available and build up from there so I only have icewm and the apps I actually use.

[Member Xecure]

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blur13 wrote:

~/.desktop-session/desktop-code.0

that file contained “@default”, not sure how that happened in the first place.

So strange. Good thing you figured it out. I wouldn’t have though of looking at the file, as I thought that the process of login in to desktop-session giving it a session-name would replace this file.

Anyways, you fixed it. Well done.

antiX Live system enthusiast.
General Live Boot Parameters for antiX.

[Member ModdIt]

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hi blur 13, thanks for then feedback, new one to me, I have dealt with corrupt user settings before
maybe even this one but as I am brutal I just copy a complete working environment in to a buggy system.
Nobody paying me working time ;-( or I might dig deeper. Users just want a working system..

Anyways good it is fixed and we all have learnt some new tricks.

[Member olsztyn]

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blur13 wrote:

Incredibly enough, I seem to have fixed it.

Great you got it fixed…

As a side comment: You would not have such problem in the first place if you ran antiX Live with no persistence, from=HD. Just a reboot would bring system to pristine state…

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

[Moderator BobC]

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Why not use a safer methodology, and create second and third user id’s?

User “system” should be created and LEFT ALONE, ie don’t make any changes to this user id. Just use it to rescue the system when necessary. You can reboot to this user id to be able to test the system itself in a default configuration.

User “test” should be created to make and test changes before implementing them under your main user id.

Always make a backup copy of your home directory before making changes.

Hopefully using a “test, then move to live” methodology like that will help you avoid getting yourself into trouble in the future…

[Member blur13]

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Hi BobC,

Thats a really good idea! I’ll implement that straight away. Is there a way to clone a user and give the user a new name? I’m guessing the home/user folder is off limits to other users so that I cant just copy the home folder .config.

Unfortunately that approach won’t completely inoculate me from messing up the system as a lot of the changes I make are made as root.

[Member ModdIt]

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Seems we all do things differently, USB sticks are cheap as chips, I keep an ISO on one, clone the tested
running system to another. Back to work in a few minutes. I have 3 users same as BobC, keeps experimental
stuff separated. Backup of home is good, I can just copy in from the clone so near enough.

~/.desktop-session/desktop-code.0 should contain one word icewm if only using that as desktop.

@blur13 Did you have any weird browsing experience before the problem occured ?.
I stopped using firefox after it looked like it crashed but was respawning headless with high CPU disk and
Network activity.

Very suspicious. There is no cheat or setting I could find to prevent headless running.

Now use Palemoon and ungoogled chromium which to date have not shown worrying behaviour.

[Moderator BobC]

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For the system id it’s very simple, just add the user and the system will create it in stock form for whatever you have installed at that point.

If you are changing things outside your home directory as root, that’s not good unless you dont mind risking your setup and data betting on your coding ability.

To setup the test user you need to copy your main users home directory to your test user and make sure the ownership’s are transferred and the attributes are copied. Maybe Xecure knows an easy way to do that.

In general, the more things you change the more untested permutations you will create, and that will result in more problems being discovered.

Ps here is a thread on cloning a user. The command used to copy the folder was: cp -pPr /home/user1 /home/user2

After copying it, you need to change the ownership.

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43114547/clone-user-copy-all-files-and-folders-and-copy-rights-linux

• This reply was modified 1 year, 6 months ago by BobC.

[Member olsztyn]

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blur13 wrote:

Unfortunately that approach won’t completely inoculate me from messing up the system as a lot of the changes I make are made as root.

You are absolutely right… This will do nothing for integrity of your system if you are executing as privileged user sometimes.
The only way I know is image backup, such as clone of Live or run Live without committing persistence. Then things return to normal pristine state upon reboot.

Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters

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