Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

greenjeans · 2025-04-11 15:58:19

Just testing and figuring things out as I go here. This is from a vanilla Devuan mini with the Mate desktop, rolled over to excalibur, and updated yesterday (some 400+ updates). Other than some boot errors it all seems to be working okay, but i'm getting a huge amount of .xsession-errors that all look like the below code, literally highlighting the error file in the file manager (caja) cause more to be generated until you de-select it. Anybody have an idea?

(caja:1927): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: 17:53:34.651: GFileInfo created without standard::sort-order

(caja:1927): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: 17:53:34.652: file ../../../gio/gfileinfo.c: line 2122 (g_file_info_get_sort_order): should not be reached

(caja:1927): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: 17:53:34.652: GFileInfo created without standard::symlink-target

(caja:1927): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: 17:53:34.652: file ../../../gio/gfileinfo.c: line 2076 (g_file_info_get_symlink_target): should not be reached

(caja:1927): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: 17:53:34.656: GFileInfo created without standard::sort-order

(caja:1927): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: 17:53:34.656: file ../../../gio/gfileinfo.c: line 2122 (g_file_info_get_sort_order): should not be reached

(caja:1927): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: 17:53:34.657: GFileInfo created without standard::symlink-target

(caja:1927): GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: 17:53:34.657: file ../../../gio/gfileinfo.c: line 2076 (g_file_info_get_symlink_target): should not be reached

Altoid · 2025-04-11 17:13:55

Hello:

... a huge amount of .xsession-errors ...

Yes, /home/.xsession.errors can get quite fat with just harmless informative printout.

See here: https://dev1galaxy.org/viewtopic.php?id=2412
and
here: http://www.daniloaz.com/en/how-to-preve

Best,

A.

greenjeans · 2025-04-11 17:28:29

Unfortunately this is new, I have the .xsession-errors down to almost zero errors, just standard output, in my daedalus versions of vuu-do. It took a lot of work, mostly just tiny errors in .css theme files and some in the icon theme and some complaints about other things. It's actually kind of handy for tracking down those tiny errors and fixing them.

The above is new with my current excalibur Devuan. I know we are just now into testing and many things will be dealt with as the year progresses and bugs are fixed and packages updated, but still i'd like to figure out these things and address them in the meantime, and thus possibly be able to give feedback that might be helpful.

If I knew where the files are that are being referenced it would help, but the above is only giving me: file ../../../gio/gfileinfo.c

Altoid · 2025-04-11 19:38:27

Hello:

... have the .xsession-errors down to almost zero ...

As long as they generate no issues ... *

... i'd like to figure out these things and address them ...

I thought likewise at one time but all the answers I found were in line with that I say above.
Like you, I don't like those errors either, but with most it's like chasing a rainbow.

So I ended up resorting to having a size limit on the /home/.xsession-errors file.

Check out this post.

* gist of most if not all the replies I got when asking about the entries in the huge /home/.xsession-errors file.

Best,

A.

Last edited by Altoid (2025-04-11 19:42:29)

greenjeans · 2025-04-11 20:21:35

Thank you Altoid for that link!!!

That is EXACTLY what i'm experiencing, read through that link and others. Basic problem seems to be in Caja. And it's nasty, it will literally build to 100's of mb's if you select and then hover over that file, and pretty much any other file. It really is a critical error because it could build up bad enough unattended to do some damage.

In current daedalus Caja is version 1.26.1 and does not have this issue, in excalibur it's version 1.26.3 which seems to be particularly bad, and documentation seems to say they fixed the issue in 1.26.4 and later.

Need a .deb of Caja 1.26.4 to test....

ETA: Found one at the opensuse build service, testing here shortly.

FYI not only does trixie still have the 1.26.3 package, but so does sid. Pretty far behind...

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-04-11 20:35:31)

fanderal · 2025-04-11 20:34:46

I've seen similar errors (GIO-CRITICAL, GLib-CRITICAL, GTK Warnings, Theme parsing errors) when trying non-repo themes and starting a GTK app. If there are no problems using the app, I add & > /dev/null after the app in ~/.fluxbox/menu. Not an ideal solution but it avoids the error msgs. There may not be an ideal solution.

The errors are caused by continual dev revisions to GTK internals but not always with backward compatibility. Which, in turn, causes theme errors after some/many revisions. Caja-1.26.3-1+b2 is Excalibur's current version and in Oct 2024:

I can confirm that on Ubuntu 24.04.1 Mate and default Caja 1.26.3 the ~/.xsession-errors log file is still writing the "GLib-GIO-CRITICAL **: ..." messages (as for the OP above) at a rate of circa 550 lines per minute.

g_file_info_ unset attributes cause errors in the logs #1704
Mar 19, 2023 thru Oct 15, 2024
https://github.com/mate-desktop/caja/issues/1704

i'd like to figure out these things and address them

Seems it's either editing the theme files, as you successfully did, or waiting for the theme devs to catch up with the GTK devs' latest revision.

Altoid · 2025-04-11 20:54:33

Hello:

Thank you ...

You're welcome.

... seems to be in Caja.
... it's nasty ...
... 100's of mb's ...
... critical error ...
... unattended to ...

... permanently screw up a solid state drive.

Best,

A.

greenjeans · 2025-04-11 21:06:06

@fanderal so you're thinking it's an issue that only manifests with certain themes?

I am using the stock desktop-base and it's themes in the excalibur iso, but not in my own (daedalus) projects, so I can't say for certain that it never occurred in the 1.26.1 version....

Been some 10 months since they patched the issue in 1.26.4, doesn't seem to be a good reason why it's not already in trixie...

I'll go test again using my own theme, need more data here. Caja 1.26.4 also needs the common files package and a couple of libraries that are also not in testing repo, possibly more since one of those libraries is libmate-desktop, so it will be difficult for me to go that route.

I guess I just don't understand how a theme could cause glib gio critical errors like that.

greenjeans · 2025-04-11 21:09:59

... permanently screw up a solid state drive.

No doubt, that's why i'm messing with it, it's a nasty bug.

And anyway, was hoping we'd be moving up to mate 1.28 or at least 1.27 in Devuan 6.

golinux · 2025-04-11 21:24:48

Altoid wrote:

So I ended up resorting to having a size limit on the /home/.xsession-errors file.

I gave up on xsession-errors years ago. Whenever I update, I immediately delete that file because otherwise I may forget and it will grow to a gargantuan size. Doing so has never impacted performance that I have noticed.

greenjeans · 2025-04-11 21:57:58

Well switching themes didn't help, still doing it.

@golinux, don't know about your system, but here I can delete the file(s), but it re-spawns every time you re-boot or logout/logbackin.

I'm gonna have to take down the test iso for now, this thing is nasty. Debian doesn't seem to want to update Mate to 1.28 like most of the major distros have done...don't know what to say about that, but going forward it's a major concern as just telling folks "hey be sure to delete .xsession-errors at the beginning of your session if you use Mate or else you could get fubar'ed" doesn't seem like it would go over well.

golinux · 2025-04-11 22:17:46

greenjeans wrote:

@golinux, don't know about your system, but here I can delete the file(s), but it re-spawns every time you re-boot or logout/logbackin.

That's what "suspend" is for. I can go for a VERY long time w/o having to reboot.

greenjeans · 2025-04-11 22:30:07

"Just delete the file and don't ever turn your machine off" is also not a great answer my friend.

In any case, I don't even blame Mate/Caja for the issue in the first place, as fanderal pointed out earlier this seems like typical gnome-f***ery once again. Break GTK yet again and call it a feature and everybody else has to scramble to figure out fixes and workarounds.

Debian needs to update Mate, they just literally swapped from a working version in bookworm to a broken one in trixie. ~~I'd file a bug report but they pretty much ignored the last one I filed.~~ Filed anyway.

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-04-11 23:32:13)

greenjeans · 2025-04-11 23:31:31

Filed using reportbug: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo … ug=1102686

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-04-12 16:15:19)

golinux · 2025-04-12 00:30:13

greenjeans wrote:

"Just delete the file and don't ever turn your machine off" is also not a great answer my friend.

Huh . . . When my tower suspends, it is quite dormant and power is off.

fanderal · 2025-04-12 07:37:40

greenjeans wrote:

@fanderal so you're thinking it's an issue that only manifests with certain themes?

I don't know. Found dbus GLib-GIO-CRITICAL errors in caja from 2016 in Arch. Found "Caja does not produce xsession errors" from caja on github from Jan 2022. And a glib-networking bug discussed in a GLib-GIO-CRITICAL bug report from Dec 2023.

Seems my view's limited as I've only seen those errors when trying a theme and testing apps from the terminal. The only repo theme I use is adwaita-dark (gnome-themes-extra pkg) to make it obvious when running the file mgr as root. All the other themes I've tried/used are GTK2/3 from *-look, pling and similar sites.

My current theme is Trinity GTK Theme. Except for two apps, no errors from any other GTK2/3 apps or with qt5ct for VBox. Exceptions are a single line from lxappearance: "GLib-CRITICAL: g_utf8_collate: assertion 'str1 != NULL' failed," and scriptfu-WARNING errors from gimp. I tested those two apps after setting the theme to gnome's adwaita-dark and got the same errors as the Trinity theme.

When I want a new desktop look, I'll download and test a dozen or more themes until I find one that works for me. My 'theme error theory' is from trying older GTK3 themes and seeing issues in app appearance and lots of errors in the terminal vs newer GTK3 themes and seeing no errors in appearance and few, if any, errors in the terminal. I've noticed this older vs newer theme issue for some time.

Altoid · 2025-04-12 12:36:49

Hello:

greenjeans wrote:

Filed using ...

Hmm ...
Good luck with that. 8^°

Last time I followed an issue here at Dev1, it required a Debian bug report, which I encouraged the author of the OP to file.

The reply was this:

bugs.debian.org wrote:

Since sysvinit is not enabled by default in Debian, I do not consider this
bug as release-critical. Downgrading the bug severity to "normal"*.

* ~~"won't fix"~~ "get lost".

You may (or may not) want to consider reading the whole Dev1 thread and the Debian bug report to get an idea of the severity of the (properly investigated) problem the OP reported to see where any non-systemd bug report stands.

Best,

A.

greenjeans · 2025-04-12 16:20:41

Well they closed the bug on me already, response indicated they will be pushing the 1.26.4 caja package sometime hopefully sooner than later. As soon as I see it i'll mark this one solved.

chris2be8 · 2025-04-12 16:32:33

My first two thoughts would be:
rm ~/.xsession-errors;ln -s /dev/null ~/.xsession-errors # Send it somewhere harmless.
or
>~/.xsession-errors; sudo chown root:root ~/.xsession-errors;sudo chattr -i ~/.xsession-errors # Truncate file, then make it totally unwriteable.

Last edited by chris2be8 (2025-04-12 16:34:35)

greenjeans · 2025-04-12 16:41:41

^^^band-aids man. The update _should_ fix the wound itself.

The errors come from a glib/gio file that was changed at some point, hardcoded in and no way gnome was gonna take it back. So the Mate guys had to patch Caja. But Debian still has the unpatched 1.26.3 version in both trixie and sid, but they are moving 1.26.4 in hopefully soon, there are some other libraries that need to be pushed as well to enable the new version, we may see a lot of new Mate packages come down the pipe.

ETA: Thank you Mike Gabriel at Debian, we do appreciate it!

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-04-12 16:46:39)

greenjeans · 2025-04-12 17:24:42

Update: They already pushed it into sid, wasn't there yesterday, woo-hoo!

But they will also have to add updated caja-common, libcaja-extension1, and libmate-desktop for it to work, ~~and none of those are updated yet.~~

Update 4-13-25 Just checked and caja-common and libcaja-extension1 (1.26.4-1) are now in sid as well.

Last edited by greenjeans (2025-04-13 15:55:02)

fanderal · 2025-04-12 18:52:20

"a glib/gio file was changed"
"no way gnome was gonna take it back"

So the Debian Mate team had to fix the issue. Good news for you, and that Mike Gabriel caught up with gnome's latest revision PDQ.

greenjeans · 2025-04-12 20:10:13

Good news for a lot of folks. Mate is pretty far down the list as far as Linux DE popularity, around 2% by most estimates i've seen, but still that works out to over 700,000 users world-wide. It's quite a bit lighter than Gnome or KDE but still gives a good well-rounded DE experience.

Good on older hardware too. And the older folks who I have converted to Linux over the years have overwhelmingly chosen it over other choices i've offered them.

I use it half the time, and Openbox the other half. It runs really well on Devuan, I think if more people tried it they would like it. So it's going to be one of my main focuses now that we are in testing season for new releases in the fall.

Mate's in the same boat as a lot of others, lack of developers and testers, so things take a while. Trying to learn more myself so I can help out better in the future, right now i'm just a user yelling at clouds, lol.

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#1 2025-04-11 15:58:19

Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#2 2025-04-11 17:13:55

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#3 2025-04-11 17:28:29

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#4 2025-04-11 19:38:27

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#5 2025-04-11 20:21:35

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#6 2025-04-11 20:34:46

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#7 2025-04-11 20:54:33

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#8 2025-04-11 21:06:06

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#9 2025-04-11 21:09:59

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#10 2025-04-11 21:24:48

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#11 2025-04-11 21:57:58

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#12 2025-04-11 22:17:46

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#13 2025-04-11 22:30:07

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#14 2025-04-11 23:31:31

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#15 2025-04-12 00:30:13

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#16 2025-04-12 07:37:40

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#17 2025-04-12 12:36:49

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#18 2025-04-12 16:20:41

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#19 2025-04-12 16:32:33

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#20 2025-04-12 16:41:41

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#21 2025-04-12 17:24:42

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#22 2025-04-12 18:52:20

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

#23 2025-04-12 20:10:13

Re: Getting a ton of the same errors in .xsession-errors in excalibur

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