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zub

Member

Registered: 2023-01-18

Posts: 35

thunar crash on rename a single file [SOLVED]

Hi!

I am running thunar 4.19.3 on EndeavourOS. I have a problem where thunar crashes when you rename a single file. Not with "bulk rename".

I find many mentions of similar behavior, for example this 2016 thread on xfce forums: Random Thunar crashes during file/folder copy, move or rename or this 2016-2017 Ask Ubuntu thread: Thunar crashes when renaming files. But nothing recent.  I can't find it in the issue tracker

Both of the above mention a webpage on a site called tuxdiaries which seems offline but the wayback machine has the page and it gives this instruction:

Run the following commands and see if Thunar crashes:

$ mkdir thunar_test
$ cd thunar_test
$ Thunar .
$ for i in $(seq 1 10); do touch "$i.txt"; done
$ while true; do for i in $(seq 1 10); do mv "$i.txt" "$i.txt.txt"; done; sleep 1; for i in $(seq 1 10); do mv "$i.txt.txt" "$i.txt"; done; sleep 1; done

and what this does is changes filenames  from "1.txt" to "1.txt.txt" and back again until you kill it. Thunar seems to display this just fine without any crashes. But my problem is only when you rename files *in Thunar* not when other applications rename them. So I guess even though the manifestation is the same, the bug itself is not?

It's also very annoying in the way it crashes, it's difficult to kill the process and you can't open thunar again til you do kill it completely. using `thunar -q` doesn't work, it gives the error "Failed to register: Timeout was reached" after about 10s.

This problem is very consistent on my system not intermittent and greatly reduces the utility of Thunar. Am hoping for some hints on troubleshooting. How to find/generate an error log etc.

thanks for all who spend time reading, pondering or answering this.

Last edited by zub (2024-08-19 15:01:44)

ToZ

Administrator

From: Canada

Registered: 2011-06-02

Posts: 11,481

Re: thunar crash on rename a single file [SOLVED]

Are there any messages in your journal as a result of the crash?
Or possibly if you run thunar from the command line (with any existing thunar processes terminated).

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zub

Member

Registered: 2023-01-18

Posts: 35

Re: thunar crash on rename a single file [SOLVED]

tldr: looks to be caused by thunarx
thanks for your help! For some reason I had it in my mind that launching via terminal didn't produce output at all ever so didn't try it. Oops.

details

Launching via terminal yeiled a bunch of errors/messages initially (as always when opening gui applications) but nothing at all during the rename. Just totally stops everything and can't even ctrl-C out. (As opposed to a successful rename which does produce a bit of output.)

I looked in journal using journalctl _PID=xxxxxx, journalctl /usr/bin/thunar, sudo journalctl /bin/thunar and nothing present for any of them. journalctl --priority=6 --follow before starting to see if anything comes up.

• nothing except notification when I use sudo killall thunar (absent at level=3)

Am not extremely proficient with this tool so not sure if there would be a better way.

Decided to investigate the messages I was getting on starting thunar to eliminate these as possibilities.

solution

tldr: uninstall thunarx-python or thunarx-python-git

Also uninstalled python-thunar-plugins-git and rabbitvcs-thunar along the way but they were not to blame. Only removing thunarx-python (which they are both dependent on) resolves.

In terms of the terminal messages, the only one that went away after removing thunarx-python specifically is this one:

$ thunar .
Initializing Arronax from /usr/share/thunarx-python/extensions/thunar-arronax.py

Later (see below) arronax is exhonerated; if it is not incidentally installed this problem leaves no trace that I could find. Would have been a big mystery for me in that case!

thunarx-python

• aur/thunarx-python

• last updated 2021-01-31

• specific version installed: 1:0.5.2-2

• source url = https://archive.xfce.org/src/bindings/t … .2.tar.bz2

Tried replacing with more up to date git version:

• aur/thunarx-python-git

• last updated = 2024-04-25

• specific version installed:  0.5.2.r138.67c9983-1

• source url = git+https://gitlab.xfce.org/bindings/thunarx-python.git ❓ I wonder if this should be updated for those people who are not affected by this issue and are using the package?

But sadly everything was exactly the same. crash

(found one potentially somewhat relevant issue in tracker: #3 v.4.18.0 crash on start)

arronax

tldr: arronax does not seem to be the problem
I am mostly including this for benefit of people searching for same problem, so they can understand.

So then I decided to look into the actual error message that changed, which is for arronax. It is a tool to create/edit .desktop files which functions as a standalone and also with file manager plugins.

• aur/arronax - some recent chat here having to do with building but idk if relevant

• not included in other arch repos, no git/dev version available

• sources: git+https://codeberg.org/diesch/arronax.git#commit=acb6aaf4826cd8f3d92bdbec8116e317fe954a98, https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/ … ?h=arronax, https://aur.archlinux.org/cgit/aur.git/ … ?h=arronax

• specific version installed: 0.8.1-5

• deps include "thunarx-python (thunarx-python-git) (optional) – for Thunar plugin"

• no obviously relevant issues in project tracker

logs?

• journalctl /usr/bin/arronax = nothing

• journalctl /bin/arronax = nothing

journalctl /usr/share/thunarx-python/extensions/thunar-arronax.py
File is neither a device node nor executable: /usr/share/thunarx-python/extensions/thunar-arronax.py

Tried various iterations to see if arronax was to blame somehow:

• thunarx-python alone = crash

• thunarx-python-git alone = crash

• thunarx-python + arronax= crash

• thunarx-python-git + arronax= crash

• arroax alone = NO crash

• without any of the above = NO crash

Since it relied on thunarx-python, arronax only loads in that package's presence. So the info message on thunar start up is misleading.

python
maybe it is python's fault? I couldn't tell.
made an attempt to see if it is python

journalctl /usr/bin/python
journalctl /usr/bin/python3
journalctl /usr/bin/python3.12

this had output but nothing seeming remotely relevant about thunar, thunarx, arronax etc. just old stuff from a couple other applications i already know to be having problems.

conclusion

Maybe I should make an issue report for thunarx. Project looks quite inactive with no comits in years.

Might try installing on another distro to see if problem is the same.

Last edited by zub (2024-08-19 14:33:51)