Description of problem: xfce4-notifyd never starts following "startxfce4" Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): xfce4-notifyd-0.6.1-1.el8.x86_64 CentOS 8 How reproducible: 100% Steps to Reproduce: 1. start CentOS 8, non graphical 2. login 3. run "startxfce4" Actual results: xfce4-notifyd does not start. The failure results in these lines appearing in/var/log/message: Jul 10 11:10:21 poweredge dbus-daemon[1587]: [session uid=0 pid=1587] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.Notifications' unit='xfce4-notifyd.service' requested by ':1.54' (uid=0 pid=1771 comm="xfce4-power-manager --restart --sm-client-id 2b411" label="unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023") Jul 10 11:10:21 poweredge xfce4-notifyd[1829]: Unable to init server: Could not connect: Connection refused Jul 10 11:10:21 poweredge systemd[1550]: xfce4-notifyd.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE Jul 10 11:10:21 poweredge systemd[1550]: xfce4-notifyd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'. Expected results: xfce4-notifyd does start Additional info: See discussion threads: https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=14228 https://forums.centos.org/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=75141&p=316210#p316210 in the latter there is a patch to /etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc which fixes the issue. The root of the problem is that when it gets down to the service which is supposed to start xfce4-notifyd "DISPLAY" is not defined. I then worked backwards to a point in xinitrc where it could be set so that it would be inherited properly. I believe the root of this problem is that originally all of the xfce4 pieces were started in a tree under xfce4-session, but on systemd machines some of that was migrated to systemd services, and the assumption that "DISPLAY" would be properly inherited, which was true originally, broke.
Perhaps I cited the wrong package, since that is where the problem appeared, but not where my fix went in. That would instead be in: xfce4-session-4.14.2-1.el8.x86_64 which provides /etc/xdg/xfce4/xinitrc
Created attachment 1710361 [details] patch that allows xfce4-notifyd to start
Any idea why this would be needed for Centos/RHEL?
My best guess is that it has something to do with flatpak, which appears to require (perhaps indirectly) all sorts of xdg related pieces. Xfce4 was installed with: dnf groupinstall Xfce flatpak was installed manually to make this new system match all the components on the previous CentOS 7 system. I do not have access to my notes at the moment for that older system, and cannot recall why it needed flatpak. Probably somebody needed to run a program which was only distributed in that form.