xfpager, and general observations

[Harry Putnam]

[NOTE:  If people think this should be taken off list, please say
so.  My feeling was that it might be of general interest to newer
users -ed HP]

Dmitry writes:
> I'd say it's a real mystery. Do you normally have gradient background,
> backdrop image or plain color on the root window? Anyway, XFCE shouldn't
> change it if you're not switching workspaces.

Harry Writes:
I tinkered with lots of settings, but really have only run xfce for
a day at this point so don't really have any settings that would
qualify as normal.

> Maybe there is something else broken there? Maybe it's not XFCE problem at
> all? I think we should start from the beginning. But maybe tomorrow. It's
> midnight in California. :)

This seems very likely, since I'm far from competent and may well
have other things screwed up. One thing is that this is all happening
on an intall of `beta' Redhat.  Known as `limbo' and is the developer
version that is being tested since last major release of 7.3.  Not
considered ready for showtime.

The macine with xfce installed is a machine I use to experiment on.
It has several OS's on it.

> I you have enough time and would like to continue, could you please
> describe your system (like CPU, distro, gcc version, libraries
> installed)? Maybe we should meet on IRC channel...

My xfce setup is on an Athlon t-bird 1.2ghz, with 2 Maxtor IDE HDD.
It has the beta release of redhat (limbo2) on Second HDD, jumpered as
2nd master, It begans at /dev/hdc2,current release (3.1) of openBSD,
is on /dev/hdc1 (in linux speak) and the lastest intel release of
Solaris (Media kit 2/02), occupies the first disk (/dev/hda1)leaving
several gbyte unused on that disk.

Dual booting with lilo.  Xfce is installed on the Redhat `limbo'
installation.

kernel 2.4.18-5
gcc-2.96
glibc-2.2.5-39

I downloaded Xfce from the cvs server, but when I noticed the
developer version couldn't be built with simple 
./configure
make 
make install

That is, there are no Makefile.in in the various directories.
I didn't know how to build them so tried the `stable' version that
was part of the cvs download.

Not sure how to tell exactly what version it is, but the last entry
in the change log says:
   2002-04-28
The *lsm file is named:
    xfce-3.8.18.lsm

I built it with simple: 
./configure --prefix=/usr/local (wasn't sure if that was default)
make
make install

I didn't encounter any errors but some warnings flew by.  I have a
complete record of the output of above commands if you want it.
I ran them thru tee into an accumulative file.

This is my first encounter with `xfce' but I did run `fvwm2' for
probably 2 years, its been a couple years ago now.  Maybe some
3-4.

It seems there are some similarities to fvwm2.

I've been using gnome/sawfish for something like 2-3 years, but it is
getting really heavy and complicated, requiring more and more
horsepower just to start it.  I notice a standard (with gnome)
install now has dozens of gnome related packaged required just to run
at all.

Can you suggest an outline to arrive at a known state.  And then
conduct experiments from that point?

Probably start by removing ~/.xfce and let all new files be
generated. Then maybe instead of copying the example xfwmrc to
~/.xfce, maybe build it with one entry at a time.

Maybe just the *xfpager.geometry  line, and nothing else.

====  
Since the above message, I've done what is suggested there.
rm -rf ~/.xfce
mkdir .xfce

Ran make distclean in top directory.
Using all unedited src files now.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local
make
make install

No errors

startx  Making sure xfce would come up
I have one simple line in ~/.Xclients-default
  exec /usr/local/bin/xfwm

It started and seems normal.  closing down X

echo -e "*xfpager.geometry +600+700\n*xfpager.smallfont 5x8" \
 > ~/.xfce/fwmrc

   startx
xfce comes up but no pager is visible.