Window manager problems

[Gilbert Sullivan]

On 09/26/2011 09:49 AM, Denny Dalessandro wrote:
> Using Xfce 4.8.0 with Fedora 15. Everything was working fine an hour ago and
> for the past few months. Then I rebooted and it all went nuts.
>
> When I log in I have no window borders, if I go into settings, the window
> manager and window manager tweaks buttons bring up blank windows. I also
> only see 1 workspace when there should be 4. Also noticed that when I click
> on the main menu button and move through the list of menus there is no
> highlighting when there used to be.
>
> I'm guessing something is making xfwm4 unhappy. There has to be some logs or
> something I can look at to figure out what is going on. The only thing that
> I can think of that I did different than what I've done a million times
> before is I was messing with a windows VM and this "enter unity" thing that
> vmware player can do. Other than that business as usual.
>
> My other window managers/desktops seem to be unaffected.
>
> Any advice is greatly appreciated.
>

It sounds to me as though xfwm4 just didn't start. Once-in-a-great-while 
I see that happen on my own systems. If the window manager dies just 
before or just as you're logging out, and the session gets saved. Then 
it doesn't start up again when you restart the system.

If it's that, just run xfwm4 to get the window manager running, check to 
be sure everything looks okay, and then log out, making sure to save the 
session. When you log back on, everything should be all right.