XFCE Login Error: Unable to Load Failsafe Session

arch-linux xfce xfce4 xdg

16,242

Solution 1

I found out that the problem was with xfce4-session-devel. The latest update doesn't work on my system. Installing the stable xfce4-session package would have been the correct fix:

sudo pacman -S xfce4-session

Solution 2

The way work for me is to replace exec startxfce 4 by dbus-launch xfce4-session

The xstartup file looks like the following:

 #!/bin/sh
 unset SESSION_MANAGER
 unset DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS
 dbus-launch xfce4-session

Solution 3

Don't use slim. It's outdated and doesn't support logind and other systemd stuff on arch. Use lightdm with the gtk greeter instead (official Xfce-IRC-help-channel recommendation).

Alsoxfce4-session-develis outdated in favor forxfce4-sessionsince the 4.12 release. I will updatexfce4-session-develas soon as a >4.12 development version is released.

16,242

GreenRaccoon23

I know 6 verbal languages and 4-ish programming languages (Go, JavaScript, Python, and Bash), plus SQL, HTML, and CSS. Some JS frameworks I've used include Node, jQuery, Backbone, Mithril, Angular, and React. My best language is JavaScript/Node, and I do a lot of personal programming in Go. I like JavaScript/Node because it's like reading and writing a book, which is my favorite and IMO the most important part of programming. I use Go when I want something insanely fast. I haven't gotten around to learning C or C++ because I haven't found a good enough reason to warrant the time and effort needed to write a program in C++ when I can use Node or Go. It's like if C++ is a Bugatti and Go is a Mercedes, yeah the Bugatti is faster but I'd rather get the Mercedes for 1/5 of the price. -EDIT- Technically, a Mercedes is only 1/200 of the price, which doesn't fit the analogy, but is 12% slower, which does fit the analogy. Linux is my preferred environment, but I like and use Mac and Windows too. I mainly use Arch Linux, but I use Ubuntu in some environments. I switch back and forth from Bash and ZSH because I can't decide on one.

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

GreenRaccoon23 almost 2 years
I'm having a problem logging into xfce under Arch Linux.
Problem:
After logging in (with Slim like I usually do), I get this error message:
```
Unable to load a failsafe session
Unable to determine failsafe session name. Possible causes xconfd isn't running (D-Bus setup problem);
environment variable $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is set incorrectly (must include "/etc") or xfce4-session is installed incorrectly.
```
Fixes that did NOT work:
I found these fixes on Google, but none of them worked for me.
1. Make sure $XDG_CONFIG_DIRS is set correctly:
```
export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/etc/xdg
```
2. Make sure everything in my home directory has correct permissions:
```
sudo chown -R $USER $HOME
```
3. Change permissions of /etc/xdg:
(I later realized that this must be an old fix because Arch recommends 755 permissions for /etc/xdg, NOT 644)
```
sudo chmod 644 /etc/xdg
```
4. Try to start an xfce session manually:
(because this did not work, I know that the problem is with xfce and not SLIM)
```
startxfce4
```
5. Total reinstall of all xfce apps:
```
yaourt -Sa $(yaourt -Qsq xfce) 
```
6. Remove xfce config and then reinstall everything (in order to make sure that xfce settings are reset to default)
```
mv ~/.config/xfce ~/.config/xfce.bak
yaourt -Sa $(yaourt -Qsq xfce)
```
7. Deleting session cache:
```
rm -r ~/.cache/sessions/
```
I'd list the output of yaourt -Qsq xfce if I could, but I'd need to login to my computer in order to copy and paste it.
Fr0sT almost 4 years

Only this variant worked for me on Debian 10, thank you bro!
Someone over 2 years

Please can you update this answer to latest 21 release