XFCE upgraded to 4.16

[Guido Falsi]

On 08/01/21 17:02, Andrea Venturoli wrote:
> On 1/8/21 4:00 PM, Guido Falsi wrote:
> 
>>> My home is on NFS4 in case it matters.
>>> If you want other info or would like me to do some tests, just ask.
>>
>> It definitely matters. chflags is not supported by NFS.
> 
> I thought so...
> 
> 
> 
>> But I have no idea why and where chflags is performed. I suspect it's 
>> mv(1) doing that
> 
> Does mv ever change flags?
> There's no mention of it in the man page and I thought it didn't.
> 
> In any case I'd be curious which flags the script would want to set.

Not sure, maybe the archive you are using when extracted causes some 
flag to be activated and mv tries to replicate it.

>> COuld you try creating a temporary directory in your home and pointing 
>> TMPDIR there?
> 
> Sure.
> Now it just dumps core without giving any message.
> A subfolder briefly appears in TMPDIR, but then it's gone.
> ~/.themes gets populated (as it did when TMPDIR was on local ZFS).
> The theme is then selectable in "Window Manager" settings, but doesn't 
> appear in xfce4-appearance-settings' list.
> 
> So, in the end, I think the messages about chflags were just warnings 
> and could be ignored; the problem lies elsewhere.
> 

I agree. There is no way then to diagnose this any further without a 
backtrace.

> 
> 
>> The script does require a change to accomodate for not having any of 
>> the variables it checks set, but you will need to define TMPDIR anyway 
>> in your setup most probably to have it working.
> 
> I've got no problem with that, altough I suggest specifying this in 
> pkg-message.
> 

I don't agree. Using a network file system for home directory if 
problematic at present. Most software uses sqlite databases for 
configurations which explicitly does not support networked file systems. 
and other problems could arise.

Such a note should be attached to most software in the ports tree. 
Firefox and thunderbird (and most other browsers AFAIK) just to name two 
which use sqlite DBs heavily.

My personal opinion is home directories on NFS made sense in the 
ninties, but now disks are big and inexpensive and using syncronization 
software (syncthing, unison) to replicate them locally makes much more 
sense and avoids many issue.

-- 
Guido Falsi <mad at madpilot.net>