xfce4 and a lot of zombies - menu problem?

[Edscott Wilson Garcia]

On Wed, 18 Jan 2006, Mr Machine wrote:

>
> ok, i've updated to very latest SVN, and it seems to be the menu-plugin
> that leaves its zombies without cleaning up. any program i launch from
> it will leave a zombie either until i reboot or kill the menu plugin (i
> am getting some of this info from xfproc - another cool addition to the
> arsenal). or maybe i'm just insane :D
>

Yes, I found xfproc much more useful than I ever thought it would be. 
Zombies would be left behind whenever the remote process made a point out 
of closing pipes. Cleanup is now being done and no zombies are left 
behind.

When you execute a program from the xffm-deskview "execute"icon, you will 
see a xffm-run process. This is in charge of poping up a window with 
output from the program. If no output has been detected, or you 
destroyed/dismissed the window and want it back again, just use xfproc to 
SIGUSR1 the process and the window will come back. When you start a 
process from the iconview or treeview, the controling process will be 
called xffm or xffm.iconview or xfbook or whatever the original  GUI's 
name was. SIGUSR1 will do nothing.

> also - the desktop menu (which you used to get from right-clicking on
> the desktop) seems to be gone from SVN after the last couple of updates.
> i have the appropriate "yes"s in the file manager settings, but still no
> pop-up menu. the menu panel-plugin builds and installs, but there's the
> zombie thing ...

Have you changed to SVN menu plugin? Maybe Brian or Jasper have changed 
the plugin from the 4.2 specifications. I have not moved anything in 
xffm-deskview with regard to the menu plugin, so if I did break something 
it was unwillingly.

>
> ps - i'm getting some core dumps (?) from xffm ... what do i do with these?
>

Try to update to current SVN. I did a lot of changes today. When you get a 
core dump, say from executable named xffm, then do:

gdb xffm core
[here you get a bunch of stuff loading]
gdb>where
[here you get the traceback to the crash]

The above information is very useful to fix the problem. Also, if xffm 
hangs and does not respond, use xfproc to crash the program and use the 
core as above to see where it was stuck.

regards,