[Xastir] Xastir crashing lxde desktop

Sat Feb 24 16:49:24 PST 2018

On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 04:32:48PM -0800, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <kg7gcf at gmail.com> flavor, containing:
> Thanks Tom,
> 
> You've given me some ideas and that is a whole lot better than what I had.
>  Do have VNC and SSH enabled and running the behavior is similar to what
> you pointed out.  There's a lot here that I don't understand .  Thanks for
> the input.  Thank you again for the work on git.  The build was flawless as
> near as I can tell.
> 
> Well thought I'd report that I disabled both ssh and vnc, rebooted, fired
> up direwolf and festival, then launched xastir.   

Is this using a locally connected monitor, then?

> The same outcome as with
> both those services enabled, the lxde desktop panel disappeared and the
> three windows with direwolf, festival, and xastir continued and the xastir
> window continued.  It all seemed to be working but I'd lost the lxde panel
> with it's application launcher, menu, etc.

Hmmmm.

> If any more thoughts or info come your way about this odd behavior I hope
> you drop me a line.

No more thoughts, but if you google with the search text "raspbian vnc bug lxde"
and "raspberry pi taskbar missing" you'll find lots of hits, some of which are 
so old the solutions they propose are suspect, but some very recent (a few 
months old).  There is one report:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=191765

that the initial release of Raspbian Stretch had the bug but it got fixed (so
an "apt-get update/apt-get upgrade" would fix it.  But you're running a
different OS, so this might not be relevant.

There's also this:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=148030&p=974857

and this:

https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/9395/i-accidently-deleted-my-taskbar-how-do-i-get-it-back

that may have *something* for you to try.  The number of low-quality answers
on some of those threads (and some of their ages) make me wary of just trying
what they say, though.

> On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 12:11 PM, Tom Russo <russo at bogodyn.org> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, Feb 24, 2018 at 11:11:53AM -0800, we recorded a bogon-computron
> > collision of the <kg7gcf at gmail.com> flavor, containing:
> > > Built xastir from the git hub source yesterday and every thing went
> > smooth
> > > as glass, nice job devs!  All features including gdal indicated they were
> > > enabled.
> > >
> > > I am running a pi3 with a udrcII, compass OS, and direwolf.  When I
> > launch
> > > Xastir, the LXDE desktop environment crashes, and I am left in an OpenBox
> > > window manager session.
> > >
> > > I am looking for any input that might help me determine what the heck is
> > > going on.  Is there something new in xastir that might account for this.
> > > It appears to be easily replicated by starting up xastir.
> >
> > Can't help you with what might be wrong, but there shouldn't be anything
> > new in Xastir for the last few years that could account for this.  Almost
> > all of the work that has gone into Xastir for the last two public releases
> > has been unrelated to its GUI (either in scripting, network handling, or
> > internal decoding of APRS data).
> >
> > Any messages in /var/log/syslog or /var/log/messages that might be
> > relevant?
> >
> > Are you viewing your desktop over VNC, or on a screen attached directly to
> > the Pi3?  I think we saw some commentary recently about there being aa bug
> > in VNC where there were problems if VNC and SSH were both enabled on the
> > machine, but that was mostly something that showed up as panels going away
> > on
> > the desktop.
> >
> > If that's not the issue, if it were me I'd start by pulling everything off
> > the
> > Pi and just seeing if Xastir, not talking to any interfaces and not having
> > any
> > external hardware on the Pi, will still crash the desktop.
> >
> > Other than that, I don't know what to guess at.
> >
> > I've only used Raspbian on my pis (they're all running Stretch right now),
> > and only old-school TNCs with them (an OpenTracker 2 for one igate, an
> > ancient
> > MFJ TNC for another igate, and an even older OpenTracker SMB running KISS
> > firmware built into an HT's battery pack for playing around).  I've no
> > experience with the UDRCII and direwolf.
> >
> > I have run Xastir on my headless Pi B+, but not through the LXDE desktop
> > --- I
> > just used ssh -Y to the machine from my desktop machine and popped the
> > window
> > back up on my desktop's X server.  It ran fine for hours, albeit with a
> > little struggle on that poor overworked B+ (which is also running
> > javAPRSSrvr,
> > something of a resource pig).
> >
> > I noticed some UI hangs, notably the little "data in/data out" arrows
> > getting
> > stuck "on" on some interfaces when no data was flowing, and the "Show
> > Incoming
> > Data" window stopped updating even though axlisten showed that
> > data was coming in over the TNC all the time.  I'm thinking that was just
> > the
> > poor little Pi B+ not having enough "oomph" to handle everything I was
> > asking
> > of it.  It still updated the map and received packets as normal, even with
> > that
> > hiccupping.  The program didn't crash, but I have no idea what would have
> > happened if I had tried to run LXDE on top of all that.
> >
> > I did briefly play with Xastir on a Pi Zero W with the LXDE desktop
> > displaying
> > on a little 7" HDMI monitor just a few weeks ago with a USB-connected TNC.
> > It, too, ran fine, and I saw no evidence of crashes.  That was just a toy
> > setup though, and I didn't keep it running for very long, as what I was
> > actually doing was rebuilding an SD card for one of my IGates, and using
> > the
> > Pi Zero temporarily to configure the new card --- and while I was at it I
> > used
> > Xastir to test out the AX25 networking set-up.
> >
> > This is all a long-winded way of saying "I dunno why you're having this
> > problem."  Sorry.
> >
> > --
> > Tom Russo    KM5VY
> > Tijeras, NM
> >
> >  echo "prpv_a'rfg_cnf_har_cvcr" | sed -e 's/_/ /g' | tr [a-m][n-z]
> > [n-z][a-m]
> > _______________________________________________
> > Xastir mailing list
> > Xastir at lists.xastir.org
> > http://xastir.org/mailman/listinfo/xastir
> >

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY
Tijeras, NM  

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