Confused with hal, xcb etc

[John Coppens]

Hi guys.

I just installed hald, and have some problems making it run correctly.
(It doesn't, yet). But one of the side effects it seems to have, is that
when Xfce is started, xfdesktop isn't run (or probably it is, but gets
killed).

If I start xfdesktop manually, it _does_ start, but doesn't do its things
completely (eg., it doesn't seem to read the config completely. Panel
shows only 4 desktops instead of 6 configged. The theme isn't selected
correctly, and the background appears, but not dimmed 50% as configged,
and the right-click menu doesn't appear, some icons missing).

Starting xfce-settings manually makes xfdesktop abort. I get this
feedback:

root at on6jc ~$ xfdesktop
** Message: This build doesn't include support for XF86Misc extension
** Message: Querying Xkb extension
** Message: Xkb extension found
** Message: Querying XINPUT extension
** Message: XINPUT extension found
** Message: Querying Xkb extension
** Message: Xkb extension found
Locking assertion failure.  Backtrace:
#0 /usr/X11/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0 [0xb7528740]
#1 /usr/X11/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0(xcb_xlib_unlock+0x2d) [0xb752886d]
#2 /usr/X11/lib/libX11.so.6 [0xb782fcc2]
#3 /usr/X11/lib/libXrandr.so.2(XRRQueryVersion+0x156) [0xb753b396]
#4 /usr/X11/lib/libXrandr.so.2(XRRSetScreenConfigAndRate+0x79)
#[0xb753bd79] 5 /usr/local/lib/xfce4/mcs-plugins/display_plugin.so
#[0xb71ea612] 6 /usr/local/lib/xfce4/mcs-plugins/display_plugin.so
#(mcs_plugin_init+0x3db) [0xb71eaadb] 7 xfce-mcs-manager(main+0x206)
#[0x804a966] 8 /lib/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe0) [0xb7560390]
#9 xfce-mcs-manager [0x8049f81]
xfce-mcs-manager: xcb_xlib.c:82: xcb_xlib_unlock: Assertion
`c->xlib.lock' failed.

** (xfdesktop:4761): CRITICAL **: settings_register_callback: assertion
`cb && user_data && mcs_client' failed

** (xfdesktop:4761): CRITICAL **: settings_register_callback: assertion
`cb && user_data && mcs_client' failed


Finally, starting xfdesktop with

LIBXCB_ALLOW_SLOPPY_LOCK=1  xfdesktop

makes things work normally AFAICS (6 desktops, right-click menu is back,
and settings work again). (I found this hack in Java-related similar
problems) 

I first thought the problems were hald-related and would be solved if I
could get it running, but I'm not so sure now: hald isn't running yet,
and the xcb hack solved the problem.

Can anyone explain this? A config problem?

John