Xfce Forum

Skaperen

Member

From: right by Jesus, our Saviour

Registered: 2013-06-15

Posts: 862

strangeness in xfce4-terminal processes

in a logged in user i found that the terminal session in one workspace was dead (keyboard input had no effect, nor did mouse paste input).  another one worked OK.  so i straced the shell of the bad one and got no activity when i tried typing on it.  i straced the xfce4-terminal process for it and got a massive amount that didn't make sense.  it was getting poll() responses then doing recvmsg() and getting nothing ... so much it filled the terminal scrollback buffer.  so i explored that.  i ultimately found that every xfce4-terminal process was waking up from poll() (and doing recvmsg()) every time any modifier key (Alt, Ctrl, Shift, Caps Lock) went down or up in any workspace.  i suspect this is because workspaces are just hiding and  exposing windows in the same X server and for some reason X doesn't follow focus for these.  other keys don't have this effect.  apparently you can press and hold a modifier key, change focus, and enter the modified key there.  i would have made X hold back if the modifier was entered out of focus, and input its down event if something to be modified was actually input there.  this seems to be a cheaper way to handle modifier keys across multiple windows. now, back to see if i can tell why that shell isn't waking up from input.

Last edited by Skaperen (2019-07-13 20:07:31)