Xpra: Ticket #1176: no icons in Kmail

Kmail-15.12.1 looks very different when started in Xpra session because there are no icons whatsoever. I wonder if that could be because of QT5 or due to some other reason?

Any ideas how to troubleshoot? Thanks.



Mon, 18 Apr 2016 11:16:21 GMT - Antoine Martin: owner changed

Please see #1144


Mon, 18 Apr 2016 12:27:01 GMT - onlyjob:

This is on Cinnamon Desktop Environment but most certainly unrelated to DE.


Tue, 19 Apr 2016 01:53:48 GMT - Antoine Martin:

As per #1144, that's nowhere near enough information to debug.


Tue, 19 Apr 2016 08:31:23 GMT - onlyjob:

I've just reproduced with "kwrite"... I think it may have something to do with D-Bus or environment variables. I'll try to isolate the problem and provide more information.

Maybe not for this particular issue but in general would it help you if I make a Docker image with Xpra server instance exhibiting a problem?


Tue, 19 Apr 2016 08:49:16 GMT - onlyjob: status changed; resolution set

This is one of the weirdest bugs I've seen...

When I SSH to localhost and start DISPLAY=:22 kwrite it starts without UI icons. If I just start it as DISPLAY=:22 kwrite (without SSH) it starts with normal interface. I've made a list of environment variables and started to unset 'em one by one until I found that icons are shown only when GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID is set. To my utmost surprise value of GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID is this-is-deprecated!

So I've SSH'ed to localhost again, and run GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID=this-is-deprecated DISPLAY=:22 kwrite which magically fixed the problem. It works properly with all icons even if I set GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID=0. I wonder where should I report this bug but it is certainly not a problem in Xpra.

Hopefully this information help those who stumble upon this problem...


Tue, 19 Apr 2016 09:04:49 GMT - onlyjob:

Another relevant variable is XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP. Apparently kwrite v15.08.3 rely on XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP to select UI features and falls back to GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID. When neither is set kwrite shows no icons...


Tue, 19 Apr 2016 09:15:42 GMT - Antoine Martin:

As of r12440, XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP will be set to our "wm-name" option (defaults to Xpra).

This will help for commands started with any of the "start[-XXXX]" options, but not when started externally.

kwrite should probably be looking up the wm-name using the standard X11 API. (and its wayland / whatever equivallent)


Sat, 23 Jan 2021 05:17:02 GMT - migration script:

this ticket has been moved to: https://github.com/Xpra-org/xpra/issues/1176