[Bug 241219] x11-wm/xfce4-wm: XFCE Screensavers Causes User Forced Reboots After FreeBSD Update

[bugzilla-noreply at freebsd.org]

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=241219

--- Comment #7 from John <jlmales at gmail.com> ---
(In reply to Guido Falsi from comment #6)

I am not being defensive.  I am trying to ensure facts as stated without having
to cover all the possibilities covered in validating the bug as a bug. You have
implied in manner you reply that the facts were not as stated or such.  That
then forces me to repeat what I have stated and state more than I need to state
for the bug in order to keep the issue focused.

I do not write code for XFCE nor do FreeBSD packaging. That said if something
is wrong with packaging of the port, or related port, or with change
management, or configuration files, documentation, et al then these and similar
are bugs and not issues.  Issues are about matters where the current behaviour
of something that is working as intended wishes to be changed in some manner. 
Unwanted or unexpected behaviour can be a bug or an issue depending on context
of if intended behaviour or not intended behaviour.

It is not a correct assumption to make that there is more than one bug simply
because in this bug instance the same incorrect symptoms occur.  The very
nature of the screensaver function implies there may be common code both of
these screensavers use, such as a library, that may be where the bug is. For
example the suggestion as a possible port for cause of the bug may be
x11/xorg-libraries because the upgrade indicated "(direct dependency changed:
libXScrnSaver)" which means that x11/libXScrnSaver may be the source of the
bug.  I do not know where the bug is, let alone if code, packaging,
configuration, et al.

Reinstalling various packages to see if the bug goes away is not an approach to
solving the bug.  All that does is allow the bug to persist and perhaps get
worse in doing so.  Reinstalling can itself cause new or worse bug, that by
rights should not occur.  They do and often due to underlying bugs not being
addressed that start to compound the bugs on top of bugs.  Added to this due to
how packages are created and made reinstalling is not the same as when
installing base packages initially.  That means there is a much wider scope of
indirect packages in scope that is makes the idea of reinstalling a major issue
as that may compound and mask the current bug as a result of other unknown and
unrelated bugs.

I understand you do not have enough information to identify the bug.  I
understand "new library versions have slight incompatibilities or internal
structures change that software inappropriately access directly or other such
things".  I believe I indicated this in my last reply comment #4.   I have been
in that situation many times professionally of not enough information to
identify a bug and have to find the bug even when engineering or development
teams says there is no bug once I have identified and duplicated the bug more
times than you can imagine.

The ps command you asked to be down would not show anything related to the
screensavers running as first I know and only had one enabled.  Second I
disabled both screensavers so my system does not lock me out forcing me to
reboot or power cycle the system.

The "issue looks to me like a possible case of misalignment brought by
incremental updates with time" may be the cause of the bug, or as all too often
occurs there is a difference between the environment the test is being
attempted on vs the system that has the problem.  Again, I have been there many
many times professionally.  The task is to find the difference which tends to
lead to being able to duplicate the bug.  Again I have been there
professionally many many times and an area I am very good at.  I have often
never been able to test on the live system to figure out if the firmware and/or
OS are the cause of the bug as often these are many miles or many km away.  So
I have to figure out how to find the information I need to duplicate the bug
using my skills, knowledge and creative approaches.

This bug has a known reference point.  The state when the system is booted and
only the XFCE DE is started (in my case via CLI startx) and just leave the XFCE
desktop as started to sit until one of the two screensavers takes effect.  That
will be the same no matter which screen saver or no screensaver is active. 
That is consistent and same and for now no FreeBSD updates will be done until
this bug is resolved.

If there is a missing element of packaging that means there is a difference in
version of library or such then that needs to be identified. I already know,
but have not reported yet, there are a few other packaging problems that result
in applications not working that have no relationship to this bug at all. 
There are at least three bugs of this type outstanding for me to log still.  If
there is a library that is not at the right version as source of this issue
then that needs to be identified as that means likely means there is a missing
dependency in the packaging, ergo bug in the packaging.

-- 
You are receiving this mail because:
You are the assignee for the bug.