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  • fvwm on Debian 12: Modules do not start. How to debug ?

    From Thomas Schmitt@21:1/5 to All on Mon Jul 22 21:40:01 2024
    Hi,

    after the striking success with my previous vim problem, i want to
    tackle another nuisance of the 11-to-12 upgrade.

    The window manager fvwm2 does not start the Modules and does not produce
    the Buttons which are prescribed by my ~/.fvwm2rc . I am direly missing FvwmPager for my 8x2 multi-desktop and FvwmButtons for my xterm-making
    button.
    I have to run a script for new xterms and to move a little xterm window
    to squeeze my way through the borders between the desktop screens.
    (There were key combinations to change desktops. But i forgot them.)

    So how could i debug the start of fvwm Modules ?
    Is there any log file or configuration option ?

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Configuration and observations:

    My init function is

    AddToFunc InitFunction
    + "I" Module FvwmBanner
    + "I" Exec xterm -ls -geometry +150+85
    + "I" Module FvwmButtons
    + "I" Exec xli -onroot -fillscreen -border /usr/share/X11/fvwm2/pixmaps/slate.gif
    + "I" Module FvwmCommandS

    To my luck the "Exec xterm" works and gives me a starting point for more
    xterms and other programs.

    The pager is probably (*) started by

    *FvwmButtons (2x1 Frame 0 Swallow(UseOld) "FvwmPager" "Module FvwmPager 0 0")

    so one could suspect that only the module FvwmButtons is broken.
    But i have a menu with module start commands which do not work either:

    AddToMenu modules_popup "Modules" Title
    ...
    + "Buttons" Module FvwmButtons
    ...
    + "Command" Module FvwmCommand
    ...
    + "Console" Module FvwmConsole
    ...
    + "Pager" Module FvwmPager 0 0
    ...

    (*) My .fvwm2rc is more than 20 years old and was inherited from SuSE.
    So i do not remember or did never learn many things which it does.

    I remember to have seen "Fvwm..." processes in the output of "ps".
    Currently i see only
    fvwm2
    /usr/bin/ssh-agent fvwm2

    (I don't know what ssh-agent has to do with fvwm2. But i have seen it in
    the "ps" listings in the past. "dbus" was involved, too. But that might
    have been a while ago.)


    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas

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  • From Greg Wooledge@21:1/5 to Thomas Schmitt on Mon Jul 22 22:20:02 2024
    On Mon, Jul 22, 2024 at 21:37:05 +0200, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
    So how could i debug the start of fvwm Modules ?
    Is there any log file or configuration option ?

    Error messages, if there are any, should be in ~/.xsession-errors for
    most users. I'd start there.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Thomas Schmitt@21:1/5 to Greg Wooledge on Mon Jul 22 23:20:01 2024
    Hi,

    (i begin to owe Greg Wooledge half a sysadmin salary and half one for a geriatric nurse)

    Greg Wooledge wrote:
    Error messages, if there are any, should be in ~/.xsession-errors

    $ cat ~/.xsession-errors
    Cannot parse color "dtcolor5"
    couldn't create gradient
    Cannot parse color "dtcolor5"
    couldn't create gradient
    sh: 1: fvwm-menu-xlock: not found
    sh: 1: fvwm-menu-xlock: not found
    sh: 1: xdg_menu: not found
    [fvwm][executeModule]: <<ERROR>> No such module 'FvwmConsole' in ModulePath '/usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8'
    [fvwm][executeModule]: <<ERROR>> No such module 'FvwmBanner' in ModulePath '/usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8'
    [fvwm][executeModule]: <<ERROR>> No such module 'FvwmButtons' in ModulePath '/usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8'
    [fvwm][executeModule]: <<ERROR>> No such module 'FvwmCommandS' in ModulePath '/usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8'
    /usr/share/X11/fvwm2/pixmaps/slate.gif is a 128x128 GIF87a image with 256 colors
    Default gamma for IRGB image is 2.20
    Compressing colormap...didn't find evidence of prior run.
    6 unique colors
    Building XImage...done
    [fvwm][executeModule]: <<ERROR>> No such module 'FvwmConsole' in ModulePath '/usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8'
    $

    Indeed, there is no directory /usr/lib/fvwm .
    In Debian 11 there was /usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8 utterly filled with Fvwm* files.

    Four of five fingers point to me and my ~/.fvwm2rc":

    ModulePath /usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8

    I see traces that i adjusted this multiple times over the years: /usr/lib/X11/fvwm2 , /usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.5 , /usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8.

    So what's its name this year ?

    $ find /usr -name FvwmPager
    /usr/libexec/fvwm2/2.7.0/FvwmPager


    It's a bit late in the evening for system-wide experiments.
    I will see tomorrow whether i can omit the ModulePath line or whether i
    have to point it to /usr/libexec/fvwm2/2.7.0 .

    Further i should begin to learn what the following lines in my ~/.fvwm2rc
    mean:

    Colorset 3 fg black, bg rgb:c8/d3/e5, VGradient 100 dtcolor5 rgb:c8/d3/e5
    ...
    Colorset 6 fg black, bg rgb:b4/aa/94, VGradient 100 dtcolor5 rgb:b4/aa/94
    ...
    PipeRead 'fvwm-menu-xlock --special-first'
    PipeRead 'fvwm-menu-xlock --special-first --name=XSaverMenu -- -nolock'
    ...
    PipeRead 'xdg_menu --charset UTF-8 --format fvwm2'

    I guess that they fail since a dozen years at least. :))
    As said, 20+ years of migration from machine to machine. Oh nostalgy.


    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas

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  • From Greg Wooledge@21:1/5 to Thomas Schmitt on Mon Jul 22 23:50:02 2024
    On Mon, Jul 22, 2024 at 23:09:59 +0200, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
    Four of five fingers point to me and my ~/.fvwm2rc":

    ModulePath /usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8

    I see traces that i adjusted this multiple times over the years: /usr/lib/X11/fvwm2 , /usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.5 , /usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8.

    So what's its name this year ?

    $ find /usr -name FvwmPager
    /usr/libexec/fvwm2/2.7.0/FvwmPager

    Why do you even have that line at all?

    hobbit:~/.fvwm$ grep ModulePath *
    hobbit:~/.fvwm$

    What happens if you comment it out?

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Thomas Schmitt@21:1/5 to Greg Wooledge on Tue Jul 23 09:50:01 2024
    Hi,

    i wrote:
    Four of five fingers point to me and my ~/.fvwm2rc":
    ModulePath /usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8

    Greg Wooledge wrote:
    Why do you even have that line at all?

    Cargo cult.
    Once it was needed, then i carried it on, and finally i forgot about it.

    The reason why i did not notice two years ago during the transition
    from Debian 10 to 11 is that both have fvwm 2.6.8.


    What happens if you comment it out?

    Nothing bad. So i will leave it that way.


    Have a nice day :)

    Thomas

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  • From songbird@21:1/5 to Max Nikulin on Tue Jul 23 14:30:01 2024
    Max Nikulin wrote:
    On 23/07/2024 04:09, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
    $ cat ~/.xsession-errors
    [...]
    [fvwm][executeModule]: <<ERROR>> No such module 'FvwmConsole' in ModulePath '/usr/lib/fvwm/2.6.8'

    A bit off-topic question. In what wiki page you would expect to find suggestions to inspect ~/.xsession-errors file and journalctl output?

    is there a general problem solving and debugging page?


    However I anyway do not have a link better that https://0pointer.de/blog/projects/journalctl.html for journalctl introduction.

    ...

    songbird

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