LXDE Forums

Posted: **Fri May 18, 2012 2:33 pm**

rockdoctor wrote:I've seen the failure to respond when clicking on a desktop icon, but not the slowdown. Sometimes the desktop icons call vanish. It often (but not always) occurs when unmounting a USB flash drive. When the problem does occur, I open a run dialog, kill any runing instance of pcmanfm, and run
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pcmanfm --desktop --profile=LXDE
to get it working again

Just reporting that I have now experienced the USB flash drive-related behavior as described by rockdoctor above.

In short, I have a 256 Mb USB flash drive that I had plugged in and mounted. I unmounted and removed it so I could use it with my all-in-one printer/scanner. (The all-in-one printer/scanner is not supported, so I scan to USB and subsequently mount the USB on my Linux box.) After scanning, I plugged in and mounted the USB flash drive. Interestingly, PCManFM did not show the scanned files on the mounted USB flash drive. To confirm the files were on the USB flash drive, I opened a terminal and worked my way to the USB flash drive. The scanned files (jpg's) were there.

Just to be sure it wasn't a one off thing, I unmounted, removed, and then remounted the USB flash drive. PCManFM still did not show the scanned files. They were still there as evidenced at the command line.

At this time, I also checked on my "Home" Desktop icon. Clicking it did nothing as has been reported above.

In a terminal, I issued the "killall pcmanfm" and the "pcmanfm --desktop" commands. All is now working again.

Posted: **Sat May 19, 2012 5:08 pm**

Happened again with the sluggish windows and all. Tried to kill pcmanfm, but could not kill process. CTRL-ALT-Backspace used to restart X. Sluggish window behavior disappeared, but so did the background image on my Desktop, as well as all my pcmanfm icons (e.g., Home).

When these events occurs, my system is pretty much unusable. Does not appear to be distro specific.

I would appreciated any suggestions for additional workarounds or for escalating this matter.

Thanks.

Posted: **Sun May 27, 2012 5:30 pm**

My computer has been up for 8 days, and this behavior has happened about 4-5 times now--less then once per day, but still pretty annoying.

In the last instance, it seemed to have something to do with dragging a doc from pcmanfm window directly onto the Desktop.

Fortunately, I've found a method that does not require me to reboot when I can't kill pcmanfm.

When the behavior occurs:
1) Open LXTerminal (if possible from GUI) or a TTY. For Ubuntu boxes, use CTRL-ALT-F1 (or any F# < F7) to log in to a TTY.
2) Execute: ps -ef | grep pcmanfm
3) Execute: kill [PID of each pcmanfm process from 2)] (e.g., kill 5555 5556)
4) If a zombie process remains (which I think causes the previously described trailing windows),
execute: kill -9 [PID of each zombie process] (e.g., kill -9 5556)
5) If on LXTerminal, sit tight. If on TTY1-TTY6, return to the GUI (CTRL-ALT-F7 on Ubuntu boxes).
6) If on LXTerminal, sit tight or optionally, if on an Ubuntu box, press ALT-F2 to open the Run Application dialog box.
7) If on LXTerminal, execute the following and subsequently close LXTerminal: pcmanfm --desktop &
If using the Run Application dialog box on Ubuntu systems, execute the following: pcmanfm --desktop

Posted: **Wed Jun 27, 2012 8:47 am**

Having the same problem running arch linux and latest lxde set. It usually happens when running the desktop for 6-7 hours, suddenly desktop items disappear, running pcmanfm from the menu yeilds nothing, whole desktop becomes unworkable and starts showing gnome menu on right click. Logging out to the login manager (slim), which should kill everthying lxde desktop related and loging in doesnt help, must reboot.

Posted: **Sat Jun 30, 2012 6:04 am**

alexanders wrote:Having the same problem running arch linux and latest lxde set. It usually happens when running the desktop for 6-7 hours, suddenly desktop items disappear, running pcmanfm from the menu yeilds nothing, whole desktop becomes unworkable and starts showing gnome menu on right click. Logging out to the login manager (slim), which should kill everthying lxde desktop related and loging in doesnt help, must reboot.

running same archlinux, with same latest lxde has same problem, but if i kill pcmanfm

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