Lost Access to Desktop Environment (Up to $500 Bounty)

User Support
1

Hello,

Initially posted on the Qubes-issues repo but was redirected here. Would greatly appreciate any help as I am working on a project and unfortunately have not backed up in a week :frowning:

My machine:

Qubes 4.1
Coreboot 4.14
Purism Librem 15v3
Intel Core i7

What happened:

I was working on my machine, when all of a sudden my screen lost all the surrounding Qubes GUI/icons.

Because new users are restricted to one media attachment, please see the initial GitHub post for screenshots of the issue as well as the logs. (Sorry!).

I greatly appreciate any help.

Thank you!

2

$250-$500 bounty!

3

If you’re able to open a terminal, try to run xfdesktop -R.
You might have to run it as root.

If that doesn’t cut it, try removing ~/.config/xfce4 (or move it somewhere else: mv ~/.config/xfce4 ~/xfce4-bak) and reloading the settings with the command above.

4

I’m not sure either, but i’d like to know your dnf history

5

Could it be related to this? panel is gone: "failed to show the preferences dialog" ¡ Issue #7358 ¡ QubesOS/qubes-issues ¡ GitHub

Also:

6

@deeplow I thought so too, but if you look at the last few pictures, I tried the xfce4-panel command with no luck

1 Like
7

@BEBF738VD and @51lieal here are the results from your suggestions/requests:

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I am still getting the same error that I did with all other attempts

Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused

Thank you for everyone’s help so far!

8

If you can access xfce4-settings-manager, try changing the output for panel.

I had a similar issue, after a firmware update, and changing the output solved the issue with panel crashing.

9

Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused
xfce4-settings-manager: Cannot open display: .
Type ‘xfce4-settings-manager —help’ for usage.

Maybe I should add that right now, the only way I could think of to bring up a terminal is to use the shortcut ctrl+alt+F2, which brings up the virtual console where I then need to login to Dom0.

10

When you boot into the empty desktop, use the windows content menu key (the microsoft windows shortcut keys). That should allow you to open a dom0 terminal, and from there you can open the settings manager.

11

Or hit alt+F3 and type “terminal”.

12

@renehoj I have a Purism Librem laptop, so no windows key

@fsflover That worked great! It actually brings up an Application Finder, where I can open any app in any Qube, including any System Tools or Qubes Tools (update, backup, etc).

I opened a Dom0 terminal, and I was able to open the xfce-settings-manager.

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13

Selecting Panel shows this error:

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14

Selecting ‘Desktop’ shows that icons and menu is selected, but it results in an error in the terminal

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(sorry for posting multiple times - I am limited to one attachment per post).

15

What error do you get when you start panel from the command line?

16

That fixes it!

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However, I can’t interrupt it or close the terminal, or the panel disappears again. Do you know of anyway to fix that? Not a big deal because I could just start it at each boot up.

So @deeplow had the right idea from the beginning, I just wasn’t opening the terminal correctly. @fsflover showed me how to do that, and renehoj brought us home (I can only mention 2 users in a post). There really wasn’t one person who can claim all the credit.

I think $200 each for a total of $600 is fair. You can dm me a Bitcoin address or venmo/cashapp, whichever you prefer.

Thank you so much! I’m very relieved

4 Likes
17

@renehoj brought us home! :blush:

18

Thank you! Can you donate $200 on my behalf to Qubes OS and post a confirmation here? :wink:

6 Likes
19

Absolutely! Thank you for donating!

20

Yoooo, this shit is pissing me off. Won’t let me attach my signed file and copy/pasting it invalidates the signature for some reason. Download from dropbox sorry:

5 Likes