Re: Execution of maintainer scripts and dependencies of package

[Richard Hector]

On 23/11/16 19:46, Ravi Roy wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I've a question regarding the package maintainer scripts (preinst,
> postinst, prerm and postrm) and dependencies of the package
> 
> I've a meta package where i've certain dependencies mentioned and i'm
> checking a config file in 'preinst' from a dependent package but is not
> found.
> 
> Question is : All dependencies of the package are installed and
> configured first then maintainers scripts are run or  ? 
> Thank you

I'm not entirely clear on the specifics, but you might find
"Pre-Depends" is more reliable for this.

https://www.debian.org/doc/debian-policy/ch-relationships.html suggests
that this should only be an issue if there's a circular dependency, but
I may be reading it wrong.

Richard





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Re: hplip and use of the "driver plugin"

[Richard Hector]

On 21/11/16 08:52, Brian wrote:
> Considering HP say they do not offer Linux support directly, you are
> doing well.

Comments like this (those from HP and other vendors, not this one from
Brian) bug me.

I don't want HP to support Linux; I want printers to use open, published
(by them or anyone else) protocols that _any_ OS provider can choose to
support. Not that there's anything wrong with them providing hplip or
whatever _as_well_.

Richard




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Re: hplip and use of the "driver plugin"

[tomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 12:21:21AM +1300, Richard Hector wrote:
> On 21/11/16 08:52, Brian wrote:
> > Considering HP say they do not offer Linux support directly, you are
> > doing well.
> 
> Comments like this (those from HP and other vendors, not this one from
> Brian) bug me.
> 
> I don't want HP to support Linux; I want printers to use open, published
> (by them or anyone else) protocols that _any_ OS provider can choose to
> support. Not that there's anything wrong with them providing hplip or
> whatever _as_well_.

Very much this. Put in other terms: *I don't want HP to actively sabotage
free software/open systems*

Phew. Had to be said.

thanks :-)
- -- tomás
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Re: KDE5-autostart bug

[Jonathan Marquardt]

It is normal that these percent sign and letter combinations are in your 
.desktop files. They're called field codes. See: 
https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html#exec-variables

Although I don't know why they're just being passed directly to the 
application. It's meant so that that their values (if present) are passed. 
Since none of these values should be declared if the application is started 
from Autostart, I'm not sure what's going on there.

On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 08:06:34PM +0300, chatrapati wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> Debian testing.
> 
> I think I find a bug, but I cannot understand in which package. Problem with
> KDE5-autostart
> 
> I put firefox-esr.desktop in ~/.config/autostart/ and when I reboot system
> firefox-esr trying to go in IP-adress "%u". There is a string
> "Exec=firefox-esr %u"
> 
> Do similarly with inkscape I have similarly problem: inkscape starting
> trying to open file "%F" .There is a string "Exec=inkscape %F" in file
> inkscape.desktop".
> 
> And so on with many other packages.
> 
> Thank you. Best regards.
> 

Re: KDE5-autostart bug

[Cindy-Sue Causey]

On 11/23/16, Jonathan Marquardt  wrote:
> It is normal that these percent sign and letter combinations are in your
> .desktop files. They're called field codes. See:
> https://specifications.freedesktop.org/desktop-entry-spec/desktop-entry-spec-latest.html#exec-variables
>
> Although I don't know why they're just being passed directly to the
> application. It's meant so that that their values (if present) are passed.
> Since none of these values should be declared if the application is started
>
> from Autostart, I'm not sure what's going on there.
>
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 08:06:34PM +0300, chatrapati wrote:
>> Hello!
>>
>> Debian testing.
>>
>> I think I find a bug, but I cannot understand in which package. Problem
>> with
>> KDE5-autostart
>>
>> I put firefox-esr.desktop in ~/.config/autostart/ and when I reboot
>> system
>> firefox-esr trying to go in IP-adress "%u". There is a string
>> "Exec=firefox-esr %u"
>>
>> Do similarly with inkscape I have similarly problem: inkscape starting
>> trying to open file "%F" .There is a string "Exec=inkscape %F" in file
>> inkscape.desktop".
>>
>> And so on with many other packages.


Is it potentially anything related to language? I've wondered about
that on occasion. Have admired the translation efforts going on. Are
those percentage sign "field codes" universal for all languages?

The other thing I thought about was maybe attempt placing them in a
super basic text editor and then reentering them to make sure there's
no invisible anythings being accidentally grabbed and processed. No,
not likely, but never hurts to rule it out. That's a hold-over tip
from helping W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) lists circa early 2000s.
:)

Just thinking out loud... :)

Cindy :)

-- 
Cindy-Sue Causey
Talking Rock, Pickens County, Georgia, USA

* runs with plastic sporks *

Re: mdadm - two questions

[Frédéric Marchal]

On Tuesday 22 November 2016 18:10:53 Kamil Jońca wrote:
> 2. there is md0 (raid1) with two disk in it. It is PV for lvm.
> I want to extend space by adding  another two disks. Is it possible somehow
> extent md0? Or the only way is to create second md device, and assign it
> to volume group?

I can only answer this question. I did something similar on an old computer 
several years ago except I had to grow the LV using other partitions instead 
of adding new disks.

The computer had two disks. Each disk had a partition assembled as a raid1 
array md0. md0 was the only PV of the VG.

When I had to grow the VG, I reclaimed two existing partitions from each disk 
and assembled them as md1 and md2. Then I added /dev/md1 and /dev/md2 to the 
VG.

It doesn't matter to the VG if it is made of /dev/sda1 and /dev/sdb2 or 
/dev/md0 and /dev/md1.

Then follow the usual procedure to grow the LV and the file system.

Frederic

Re: KDE5-autostart bug

[Greg Wooledge]

On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 07:54:33AM -0500, Cindy-Sue Causey wrote:
> Is it potentially anything related to language? I've wondered about
> that on occasion. Have admired the translation efforts going on. Are
> those percentage sign "field codes" universal for all languages?

Do you mean natural languages, or programming languages?  The use of
"field codes" or "format specifications" that look like a percent sign
followed by a letter goes back at least to the printf() function in C.
The convention was widely adopted by other programming languages and
utility programs as well.  In the shell alone, there's printf(1) and
date(1), and GNU's find(1) has a -printf extension that uses them.

If you're talking about natural language translations, then someone
translating a string that contains obvious programming-language syntax
like %s will have to take extra care to make sure the ordering of the
"field codes" is preserved.  It's an important and difficult issue,
especially in natural languages that use a different syntax than English.
E.g. most romance languages place an adjective behind the noun that
it modifies ("el gato negro"), versus English which puts the adjective
in front ("the black cat").  If a program written in English specifies
a noun and an adjective using two "field codes" in the same string,
the translations have to preserve that ordering, because the code that
uses the string is going to pass the adjective first, and then the noun
second.

There are lots more issues of that nature -- many natural languages have
gendered nouns, and most idioms don't translate well, etc.

Re: hplip and use of the "driver plugin"

[Gene Heskett]

On Wednesday 23 November 2016 06:59:05 to...@tuxteam.de wrote:

> On Thu, Nov 24, 2016 at 12:21:21AM +1300, Richard Hector wrote:
> > On 21/11/16 08:52, Brian wrote:
> > > Considering HP say they do not offer Linux support directly, you
> > > are doing well.
> >
> > Comments like this (those from HP and other vendors, not this one
> > from Brian) bug me.
> >
> > I don't want HP to support Linux; I want printers to use open,
> > published (by them or anyone else) protocols that _any_ OS provider
> > can choose to support. Not that there's anything wrong with them
> > providing hplip or whatever _as_well_.
>
> Very much this. Put in other terms: *I don't want HP to actively
> sabotage free software/open systems*
>
> Phew. Had to be said.

Something that needs to be repeated often enough they can hear it in the 
board rooms.  There are 3 main brands of printers that when I am in the 
market, I walk right past their shelf space and go look at another 
brand, purely because of their avowed, you are using linux, so we will 
not warranty any failures, or that go to extreme lengths to protect 
their aftermarket ink or toner sales while selling the same cartridge 
for several different printers at prices dependent of the original cost 
of the printer but the price varies by a 5/1 ratio. Most of the profit 
in selling the printer, is in the replacement of its expendables, so 
much so that they can sell the printer for $19.99.  Thats cool, until 
the ink runs out, and the replacement cartridge is over $100.  That 
brand of user capture has never felt right to this old man. In my house, 
a name brand lives or dies by the quality of printout and its cost per 
printed page.
>
> thanks :-)
> -- tomás


Cheers, Gene Heskett
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
Genes Web page 

router solutions based on Debian?

[Daniel Pocock]

My ISP is upgrading my connection to gigabit on Friday and I suspect my
current router may struggle with it.

My existing router runs OpenWRT but I've found the firewall and IPsec
setup is a little bit constrained in that environment and it is tempting
to move to a router running a full OS.

I've seen a lot of discussions about making DIY routers running a free
OS like Debian, FreeBSD or OpenBSD and I was tempted to go with
something like that running Shorewall, strongSwan, DHCP and DNS.  Maybe
it will also do wifi or maybe the existing router will be a bridge to wifi.

Can anybody share any comments or links about this topic?

- quiet (fanless), low-power and low cost hardware suitable for Gigabit
routing and maybe use as a NAS too.  It would also be useful to have
fibre support in the router and avoid using a media convertor.

- are there any live builds or other out-of-the-box solutions that
address this use case particularly well?

- any blogs or other articles that provide a good example of how other
people already did this?

One particular concern for me is minimizing the number of components.
I've got a media convertor and fibre transceiver already, but that has
its own plug-pack PSU and those are all extra things that can fail at
some random moment in the future.  Having a self-contained solution
without a bunch of plug-pack PSUs would hopefully be easier to support
and make less clutter.

Regards,

Daniel

Re: router solutions based on Debian?

[Eero Volotinen]

check out pfsense.org

eero

23.11.2016 4.54 ip. "Daniel Pocock"  kirjoitti:

>
>
> My ISP is upgrading my connection to gigabit on Friday and I suspect my
> current router may struggle with it.
>
> My existing router runs OpenWRT but I've found the firewall and IPsec
> setup is a little bit constrained in that environment and it is tempting
> to move to a router running a full OS.
>
> I've seen a lot of discussions about making DIY routers running a free
> OS like Debian, FreeBSD or OpenBSD and I was tempted to go with
> something like that running Shorewall, strongSwan, DHCP and DNS.  Maybe
> it will also do wifi or maybe the existing router will be a bridge to wifi.
>
> Can anybody share any comments or links about this topic?
>
> - quiet (fanless), low-power and low cost hardware suitable for Gigabit
> routing and maybe use as a NAS too.  It would also be useful to have
> fibre support in the router and avoid using a media convertor.
>
> - are there any live builds or other out-of-the-box solutions that
> address this use case particularly well?
>
> - any blogs or other articles that provide a good example of how other
> people already did this?
>
> One particular concern for me is minimizing the number of components.
> I've got a media convertor and fibre transceiver already, but that has
> its own plug-pack PSU and those are all extra things that can fail at
> some random moment in the future.  Having a self-contained solution
> without a bunch of plug-pack PSUs would hopefully be easier to support
> and make less clutter.
>
> Regards,
>
> Daniel
>
>

Re: router solutions based on Debian?

[Bernhard Schmidt]

Daniel Pocock  wrote:

Hi Daniel,

> My ISP is upgrading my connection to gigabit on Friday and I suspect my
> current router may struggle with it.
>
> My existing router runs OpenWRT but I've found the firewall and IPsec
> setup is a little bit constrained in that environment and it is tempting
> to move to a router running a full OS.
>
> I've seen a lot of discussions about making DIY routers running a free
> OS like Debian, FreeBSD or OpenBSD and I was tempted to go with
> something like that running Shorewall, strongSwan, DHCP and DNS.  Maybe
> it will also do wifi or maybe the existing router will be a bridge to wifi.
>
> Can anybody share any comments or links about this topic?
>
> - quiet (fanless), low-power and low cost hardware suitable for Gigabit
> routing and maybe use as a NAS too.  It would also be useful to have
> fibre support in the router and avoid using a media convertor.
>
> - are there any live builds or other out-of-the-box solutions that
> address this use case particularly well?

My recommendation if you basically want a fanless mini PC is the PC
Engines APU (2C4 for example). Quadcore 1GHz amd64 with AES-NI, 4 GB
RAM, 3 GE ports, USB 3.0 external. I recommend using a M2 SSD for boot
media. With PSU and case it starts around 220 EUR. Debian works out of
the box.

You can also have a look at the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter line. There are
models with SFP slot available, even the small models are supposed to be
able to support GE throughput and are < 100 EUR. They are MIPS Cavium
boards with a custom kernel, but you can get a rootshell and there is a
Debian (I think Wheezy at the moment) userland on it. I don't think you
can get the hardware to be fully-free running a vanilla Debian, so YMMV.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

Re: xorriso: listing files+offsets in an ISO9660 image w/o RockRidge

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Tue, Nov 22, 2016 at 09:46:16PM +0100, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
> If they demonstrate the Rock Ridge read error despite -read_fs "norock",
> then they might help to solve the riddle.

Yes the do.  I'm just about to mail you privately with a URL to one.


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Re: orriso: listing files+offsets in an ISO9660 image w/o RockRidge

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Fri, Nov 18, 2016 at 05:27:25PM +0100, Thomas Schmitt wrote:
>   $ gdb xorriso/xorriso
>   (gdb) b fs_image.c:3024
>   (gdb) b rockridge_read.c:111
>   (gdb) r -read_fs norock -indev /path/to/your.iso

Using the above and one of the UDF images that I am about to email you a URL to,
and the above, the process exits normally (w/o hitting breakpoints) and w/o
printing the RR error.

But digging into this a little, it seems to be an argument order issue.

works:-read_fs norock -indev ...
problems: -indev ... -read_fs norock

So running GDB but flipping the argument order from your example:

(gdb) r -indev /media/scratch/DVDrs/ballards_world.iso -read_fs norock
Starting program: /home/jon/git/xorriso-1.4.7/xorriso/xorriso -indev 
/media/scratch/DVDrs/ballards_world.iso -read_fs norock
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
GNU xorriso 1.4.7 : RockRidge filesystem manipulator, libburnia project.

xorriso : NOTE : Loading ISO image tree from LBA 0

Breakpoint 1, iso_image_filesystem_new (src=, opts=0x820e50, 
msgid=, fs=0x7fffe000)
at libisofs/fs_image.c:3024
3024ret = read_root_susp_entries(data, data->pvd_root_block);

> If it stops at one of the breakpoints, please do
> 
>   (gdb) where

(gdb) where
#0  iso_image_filesystem_new (src=, opts=0x820e50, 
msgid=, fs=0x7fffe000)
at libisofs/fs_image.c:3024
#1  0x004a6401 in iso_image_import (image=0x1, src=0x800, 
src@entry=0x820e90, opts=0x0, features=0x0,
features@entry=0x7fffe140) at libisofs/fs_image.c:5703
#2  0x0048cf9f in isoburn_read_image (d=, 
read_opts=0x820d50, image=0x7fffe220)
at libisoburn/isofs_wrap.c:316
#3  0x0045912e in Xorriso_aquire_drive (xorriso=0x77e21010,
adr=0x800 ,
adr@entry=0x820210 "/media/scratch/DVDrs/ballards_world.iso", 
show_adr=show_adr@entry=0x0, flag=1)
at xorriso/drive_mgt.c:565
#4  0x0043e8c5 in Xorriso_option_dev (xorriso=0x77e21010, 
in_adr=, flag=)
at xorriso/opts_d_h.c:122
#5  0x00431fc1 in Xorriso_interpreter (xorriso=0x77e21010, argc=5, 
argv=0x0, idx=0x7fffe424, flag=255,
flag@entry=2) at xorriso/parse_exec.c:1389
#6  0x00403dd2 in main (argc=5, argv=0x820150) at 
xorriso/xorriso_main.c:265


-- 
Jonathan Dowland
Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.


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Re: orriso: listing files+offsets in an ISO9660 image w/o RockRidge

[Jonathan Dowland]

On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 03:40:22PM +, Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> But digging into this a little, it seems to be an argument order issue.

...and all of my ISOs now read fine without the RR warnings. I haven't 
double-checked
the docs, if you state that the argument order of -read_fs / -indev is 
important, then
this is just pilot error after all :-)


-- 
Jonathan Dowland
Please do not CC me, I am subscribed to the list.


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Re: xorriso: listing files+offsets in an ISO9660 image w/o RockRidge

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

Jonathan Dowland wrote:
> But digging into this a little, it seems to be an argument order issue.

Yes, sequence matters. The arguments are commands like in a shell script,
not options like with program "ls".

There is command -x which lets xorriso sort the arguments in a sequence
that is most likely to do what would be desired by a user who is not
interested in a particular sequence.


> (gdb) r -indev /media/scratch/DVDrs/ballards_world.iso -read_fs norock

This first loads the ISO and then disables Rock Ridge reading.

  -read_fs norock -indev /media/scratch/DVDrs/ballards_world.iso

or

  -x -indev /media/scratch/DVDrs/ballards_world.iso -read_fs norock

are supposed to do better.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: router solutions based on Debian?

[Stefan Monnier]

> Can anybody share any comments or links about this topic?
> - quiet (fanless), low-power and low cost hardware suitable for Gigabit
> routing and maybe use as a NAS too.  It would also be useful to have
> fibre support in the router and avoid using a media convertor.

I don't know what you consider low-power, or low-cost, or suitable for
gigabit, but I use a BananaPi for this task.

If you need more network connections, there's the "BPI-R1", but the
switch part is only supported in the OpenWRT kernel (just like all other
home-router-style switches: doesn't prevent you from using Debian, but
makes it less convenient since you have to build your own kernel).

> - are there any live builds or other out-of-the-box solutions that
> address this use case particularly well?

I just setup dnsmasq, shorewall, and OpenVPN by hand.

I used an OpenWRT box before and actually liked the luci web-interface
(although usually "web-interface" and "like" are usually incompatible in
my world), but haven't found anything comparable for Debian.  But this
is compensated by the ease of installing and upgrading packages,
compared to what needs to be done with OpenWRT.


Stefan

Re: router solutions based on Debian?

[maderios]

On 11/23/2016 03:54 PM, Daniel Pocock wrote:


I've seen a lot of discussions about making DIY routers running a free
OS like Debian, FreeBSD or OpenBSD and I was tempted to go with
something like that running Shorewall, strongSwan, DHCP and DNS.  Maybe
it will also do wifi or maybe the existing router will be a bridge to wifi.

Can anybody share any comments or links about this topic?


Hi
Good luck...
https://wiki.debian.org/DebianWRT

--
Maderios

Re: xorriso: listing files+offsets in an ISO9660 image w/o RockRidge

[Thomas Schmitt]

Hi,

Jonathan Dowland sent me the URL of a test image which demonstrates
the problem with reading ISO 9660 images not produced on Linux.


Indeed the problem appears when reading the Rock Ridge info of the
root directory. So xorriso-1.4.6 in Debian testing cannot avoid it.

The root directory record is at block 259. Its length is 40 bytes of
which 34 are occupied by ISO 9660 directory data. So 6 bytes stay free
for potential SUSP data. All 6 bytes are 0. So it is no SUSP.

Here libisofs makes a mistake:
When checking for the SUSP entry "SP" it accepts 0 potential SUSP bytes
or a SUSP-compliant entry. The case of non-SUSP extra bytes is not covered
and triggers the error message.

libisofs should have disabled Rock Ridge reading automatically rather than
bailing out.

I will now develop a remedy and use your ISO to test it.
Then i'll ask Jonathan to check it on xihis collection.


Have a nice day :)

Thomas

Re: forcefsck inconsistency

[David Wright]

On Tue 22 Nov 2016 at 23:32:34 (+0100), Pierre Frenkiel wrote:
> On Tue, 22 Nov 2016, David Wright wrote:
> 
> >Some things got a bit out-of-date perhaps. What works is to edit the
> >linux line in grub, adding [forcefsck]

>   It would be interesting to know which one is out-of-date, checkfs.sh or 
> systemd-fsck?
>   Anyway, my question was not "how to force fsck". This can be done either 
> with
>   "touch /forecfsck" which gives warnings, but does not prevent fsck to run.
>   or
>   at boot, edit the command line, adding "fsck.mode=force"
>   both methods have the advantage that the force mode is removed after the 
> boot.
> 
>   My question is: why fsck does not process the 2 partitions / and /dev/sdg1 ?

I don't know what the issue is with /dev/sdg1. I do know that
/etc/fstab needs to be more sane than used to be the case. Although
man fstab says that it is scanned and acted upon sequentially, that
appears no longer to be so: later bad entries can affect earlier ones.

As for the root filesystem, are you saying that it was not checked
even when you did what I suggested? What does
# tune2fs -l /dev/sda1 | grep 'st ch'
show (assuming / is /dev/sda1)?

Cheers,
David.

Re: router solutions based on Debian?

[Jan Bakuwel]

Hi Daniel,

> On 24/11/2016, at 04:26, Bernhard Schmidt  wrote:
> 
> Daniel Pocock  wrote:
> 
> Hi Daniel,
> 
>> My ISP is upgrading my connection to gigabit on Friday and I suspect my
>> current router may struggle with it.
>> 
>> My existing router runs OpenWRT but I've found the firewall and IPsec
>> setup is a little bit constrained in that environment and it is tempting
>> to move to a router running a full OS.
>> 
>> I've seen a lot of discussions about making DIY routers running a free
>> OS like Debian, FreeBSD or OpenBSD and I was tempted to go with
>> something like that running Shorewall, strongSwan, DHCP and DNS.  Maybe
>> it will also do wifi or maybe the existing router will be a bridge to wifi.
>> 
>> Can anybody share any comments or links about this topic?
>> 
>> - quiet (fanless), low-power and low cost hardware suitable for Gigabit
>> routing and maybe use as a NAS too.  It would also be useful to have
>> fibre support in the router and avoid using a media convertor.
>> 
>> - are there any live builds or other out-of-the-box solutions that
>> address this use case particularly well?
> 
> My recommendation if you basically want a fanless mini PC is the PC
> Engines APU (2C4 for example). Quadcore 1GHz amd64 with AES-NI, 4 GB
> RAM, 3 GE ports, USB 3.0 external. I recommend using a M2 SSD for boot
> media. With PSU and case it starts around 220 EUR. Debian works out of
> the box.
> 
> You can also have a look at the Ubiquiti EdgeRouter line. There are
> models with SFP slot available, even the small models are supposed to be
> able to support GE throughput and are < 100 EUR. They are MIPS Cavium
> boards with a custom kernel, but you can get a rootshell and there is a
> Debian (I think Wheezy at the moment) userland on it. I don't think you
> can get the hardware to be fully-free running a vanilla Debian, so YMMV.

+1 for PCenigines APU boards. Used the predecessors (Alix) for years, now using 
APU's where higher speeds are required, all running Debian out of the box. 
These never missed a beat. They also have a SATA port if you'd like to use it 
as a NAS as well.

SSD is great if you can afford them. They also work with cheaper SD cards.

regards,
Jan

Re: router solutions based on Debian?

[Daniel Pocock]

On 23/11/16 15:54, Daniel Pocock wrote:

> 
> Can anybody share any comments or links about this topic?
> 
> - quiet (fanless), low-power and low cost hardware suitable for Gigabit
> routing and maybe use as a NAS too.  It would also be useful to have
> fibre support in the router and avoid using a media convertor.
>

A few things appeared on planet.debian.org over the last few months,
here is one of them

https://anarc.at/blog/2016-11-15-omnia/

Google didn't dig up any others though, if anybody else can share links
to things on this topic that would be great

Re: No right or middle click on XFCE desktop after Upgrade from Jessie to Stretch

[dmacdoug]

On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 02:57:19PM -0800, dmacdoug wrote:
> On Thu, Nov 17, 2016 at 07:50:36AM -0800, Mike Kupfer wrote:
> > dmacdoug wrote:
> > 
> > > sure enough there is no DISPLAY environment variable set. So I set it and
> > > then the error message became:
> > > 
> > > Failed to connect to session manager: Failed to connect to the session
> > > manager: SESSION_MANAGER environment variable not defined
> > > 
> > > I notice there are several other variables missing which do appear on
> > > another machine with working xfce system, i.e. one still on stretch 
> > > distribution, such as XDG_MENU_PREFIX=xfce-, XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/etc/xdg 
> > > as well as SESSION_MANAGER and several others.
> > 
> > Huh.  How odd.  I guess the next step would be to do "pgrep xf" on a
> > working and non-working system and see what's not running on the
> > non-working system.  (In particular, is xfce4-session running?)  Then
> > make sure the corresponding packages are installed on the non-working
> > system.
> > 
> > What display manager is the non-working system using?
> > 
> > Is /usr/bin/startxfce4 present on the non-working system?
> > 
> It looks like lightdm is runnung on the system that is not working.  
> 
> I don't think there is any display manager on the working system.
> On it, startx runs xinit which starts xfce4.
> 
> startxfce4 is present on both systems.
> 
> I did something yesterday and ended up restarting the system on 
> the non-working machine and mow it looks like xfce4 isn't running 
> on that machine.  I don't have physical access to it till Sunday 
> afternoon.  I'm currently working on it through a remote shell
> and I'm not sure if or how I can start an X session on the 
> console from a remote shell so I think I'll have to continue this
> next week.  Then I'll compare them with pgrep and see what 
> differences there are.
> 
> Until then, thanks for your help.  
> 
> To be continued.
> Don
> 

I wish could explain what was wrong and what fixed it, but in any 
case, I can report that after installing all the latest package 
updates (it is the testing distribution) and restarting the system 
it seems like all of the XFCE4 processes that would be expected are 
running with the exception of xfdesktop, so I ran it from the 
command line in a shell and this time it ran just fine and, as you 
said, it runs automatically now whenever the system is restarted.  
When I updated the packages I noticed that a number of xfce4 
packages updated.  I don't know if any of the changes in them had 
anything to do with things working correctly afterwards or just 
coincidence.

Thank you very much for your help.  I know a little bit more about
XFCE4 now than I did.

Don