wm/fluxbox vs 'xdm' failsafe session, etc.

["John D. Baker" <jdbaker%mylinuxisp.com@localhost>]

I've encountered a strange phenomenon.  While assisting a friend with
recovery and repair of his system, I've encountered some problems with
'fluxbox'.

When using the 'xdm' failsafe session (F1 or CtrlKP_Enter to enter
password), if this is the first time starting 'fluxbox', the "~/.fluxbox"
directory is created and at least partially populated, but no window
decorations appear and the failsafe 'xterm' is unresponsive.

(On the system being repaired, apparently 'fluxbox' runs, but does not
present a menu in response to the right mouse button.  I have not been
able to duplicate this.)

'fluxbox' can only be terminated by switching to a text console or remote
login (SSH) and then killing it.  (On the system under repair, "wscons"
does not properly restore the video timings, so switching to a text
console causes the LCD panel to display an "out of range" message box.)

Restarting fluxbox from the failsafe xterm still hangs it.

If one is at a text console or network login, one may start 'fluxbox'
with, e.g., 'fluxbox -display :0 &' and fluxbox will run normally on
the X display.


To confuse things even more, if one already has a populated ".fluxbox"
directory from earlier versions (i.e., prior to v1.3.7 in "wm/fluxbox"
and "wip/fluxbox"), 'fluxbox' may be started from the failsafe xterm
without problems.


There is also a bug in "${WRKSRC}/util/fluxbox-generate_menu.in", installed
by "wm/fluxbox/patches/patch-aa".  It explictly quotes the "$" in:

  USERFLUXDIR="\${HOME}/.@pkgprefix@fluxbox@pkgsuffix@"

The resulting 'fluxbox-generate_menu' script looks literally for:

  ${HOME}/.fluxbox

instead of having ${HOME} expand to the user's home directory.  Naturally,
this fails and the menu is not generated.  This does not affect first-time
generation of "~/.fluxbox/menu", however.


Any thoughts, comments, or clues on the above issues?

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