There were some changes made in 4.2 that limited the frequency that the panel saves it's configuration. This has been causing me significant problems when connecting remotely to my machine. (I use freenx to login from my workplace whilst leaving my machine logged in at home) It seems that the panel will only save the configuration if it believe is has changed when it closes. This has the effect that changes made on the desktop will not reflect the newly logged in remote session. It also appears that this somehow causes the more up to date session to forget to save when it closes. Furthermore, if for any reason the panel is not closed gracefully (ie, I once again typed "sudo halt" in a terminal window) then the configuration isn't saved. I could go on, mentioning laptop batteries, power failure and probably others... The important question: It is possible to revert to the previous behaviour?
Hmm, I afraid there is no way to change it at the moment. It was done to protect the panel from crashing plugins. Seems the effect may be a bit too drastic. Not saving config on improper shutdown is a feature, the effects you describe are an unfortunate side-effect. I'll try to think of a solution. Thanks for the report. Btw, Xfce certainly does not support being logged in twice as the same user though, so I'm not sure that is going to be easy to fix.
I would be more than happy with the panel saving config on USR1 signal, if that's a doable option.
(In reply to comment #2) > I would be more than happy with the panel saving config on USR1 signal, if > that's a doable option. Hmm, yeah, that would be quite easy. The problem is that USR1 is used for restarting and USR2 for quitting with confirmation. Both are documented I believe so I don't really want to change that. Hmm, I could just add a commandline option xfce4-panel --save ...
(In reply to comment #3) > (In reply to comment #2) > > I would be more than happy with the panel saving config on USR1 signal, if > > that's a doable option. > > Hmm, yeah, that would be quite easy. The problem is that USR1 is used for > restarting and USR2 for quitting with confirmation. Both are documented I > believe so I don't really want to change that. Hmm, I could just add a > commandline option xfce4-panel --save ... Oh, btw, restarting does save the panel configuration, so this might already work for you.
I've discovered that If xfce4 running at DualHead mode then panel at Monitor2 (:0.1) can't work with configs et all. Panel at Monitor1 (:0.0) works well (get/set config from ~./config/xfce4/panel/contents.xml), panel @ Monitor2 only can get config from /etc/xdg/xfce4/panel/contents.xml and crushes at saving.
adds: panels crashes at xfce4-panel-4.2.2/panel/settings.c:291 [...] 288 if (!g_file_test (tmprc, G_FILE_TEST_EXISTS)) 289 { 290 if (!g_file_test (xfcerc, G_FILE_TEST_EXISTS)) 291 g_critical ("No current config file available"); 292 goto out; 293 } [...]
(In reply to comment #6) > adds: panels crashes at xfce4-panel-4.2.2/panel/settings.c:291 > [...] > 288 if (!g_file_test (tmprc, G_FILE_TEST_EXISTS)) > 289 { > 290 if (!g_file_test (xfcerc, G_FILE_TEST_EXISTS)) > 291 g_critical ("No current config file available"); > 292 goto out; > 293 } > [...] > Hmm, could you show me the full backtrace? Thanks for the report, btw.
This version of the panel should fix all or most of the saving issues: http://www.xfce.org/archive/test/xfce4-panel-4.2.3.1.tar.gz
Ok, I'm resolving this as fixed. I'm not sure there will be an official release, but the package will always be available from here: http://www.xfce.org/archive/test/xfce4-panel-4.2.3.1.tar.gz
*** Bug 1775 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***