XFCE Login Freeze

[Joel Rees]

On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 4:47 PM, Jonathan Allen
<jonathan at barumtrading.co.uk> wrote:
> Joe,
>
>> >No-one else can get a graphical session on that box because the graphical
>> >console is taken with the stalled session, but console logins are still
>> >fine and other users can freely start graphic sessions on other machines
>> >on the network.
>>
>> What happens if somebody else tries to log on just after a reboot?
>
> That too is fine; any other user, either after a reboot or after the
> frozen XFCE session has been taken out by "kill -15"
>
> Jonathan

Well, then, the user should try to log in on a regular X11 session
(usual graphical login), get the freeze, then log in immediately via
ssh or a virtual console and look at his hidden files under the home
directory:

ls -lart ~/

or /home/username if the admin is checking for the user. These options
will show the most recently changed hidden directories, which may or
may not provide a clue. Just for grins, check /var/log immediately
with the same options. You might see some new logs with some clues
from the stalled login.

One hidden directory to check in would be ".cache" . Notice the
contents of .cache/sessions and .cache/menus .

Another hidden directory to check would be ".config" . There might be others.

How to tell what to delete? Go by sense of smell. Stuff in caches
should not be too much of a concern, but stuff in configurations, you
might want to check the man pages and think about once or twice first.
Anyway, try emptying the obvious caches first.

That is, kill the stalled session, empty a cache, try logging in again.

--
Joel Rees