# XFCE Windowing Issue With Interactive Apps

**URL:** <https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/xfce-windowing-issue-with-interactive-apps/2647>\
**Category:** Get Help\
**Created:** [April 19, 2023, 7:48pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/xfce-windowing-issue-with-interactive-apps/2647 "2023-04-19T19:48:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![brad.traver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@brad.traver](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/brad.traver)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 7:48pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/xfce-windowing-issue-with-interactive-apps/2647/1 "2023-04-19T19:48:26Z")

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I’m having issues with all of our interactive apps on our RHEL 8 compute nodes. The issue seems to have come about after updating OOD from version 2.0.28. I’ve tried updating to 2.0.31, 2.0.32 and 3.0.0 but the issue still persists. The issue I’m having is that the window title bar is gone. Windows can’t be moved or resized. The context menus usually don’t work. However, the interactive desktop works perfectly fine. Our web node is RHEL 7 and the compute nodes that have issue are RHEL 8 (tested both 8.3 and 8.6, same problems on both). Our RHEL 7 compute nodes don’t have any issues. All compute nodes are using XFCE4. Below is my before script on the particular app I’m testing:

```auto
echo "Starting before.sh..."
module load shared
module load cuda10.2/toolkit cudnn7.6-cuda10.2
#export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS="/etc/xdg/xfce4"
export XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$HOME/.config/xfce4"
export XDG_DATA_HOME="<%= session.staged_root.join("share") %>"
export XDG_CACHE_HOME="$(mktemp -d)"
export SEND_256_COLORS_TO_REMOTE=1
xfwm4 --compositor=off --sm-client-disable &
xsetroot -solid "#D9F6FF"
xfsettingsd --sm-client-disable --daemon
xfce4-panel --sm-client-disable &

```

Does anyone have any ideas on what the issue could be?

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**Author:** ![jeff.ohrstrom](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.openondemand.org/jeff.ohrstrom/32/136_2.png) [@jeff.ohrstrom](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/jeff.ohrstrom)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 8:33pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/xfce-windowing-issue-with-interactive-apps/2647/2 "2023-04-19T20:33:48Z")

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There is some issue in the way we wrote our apps and RHEL/8. Your OOD version has no affect on this issue.

From the looks of your `before.sh.erb` you may have already seen these topics. I had to sprinkle in some `sleep` commands here and there. The last post on the MATLAB topic may be of interest too, it doesn’t have sleeps but also has `eval $(dbus-launch --sh-syntax)` which may be important in this context.

> [@Problems with interactive Matlab app window](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/problems-with-interactive-matlab-app-window/2476):
>
> Hello, I’m having trouble getting the expected behavior with the window in a Matlab interactive app. Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated! My problem appears similar to the issue described in [Matlab window problem](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/matlab-window-problem/2294): the standard window features don’t work, i.e. the window won’t resize, min/max/close buttons are missing. However, I’m seeing different errors in the log. I’m using a simplified version of OSC’s script.sh.erb from the [OSC/bc\_osc\_matlab GitHub repo](https://github.com/OSC/bc_osc_matlab/blob/master/template/script.sh.erb): #!/usr/bin/env bash # …

> [@App doesn't have desktop background](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/app-doesnt-have-desktop-background/2493):
>
> I’ve got two ondemand systems, an old one and a new one. The old one is version 1.6.25-1.el7, the new one is 2.0.29-1.el8. I’m trying to get the new one setup and running. I copied over my RStudio app that lives in /var/www/ood/apps/sys/RStudio and adjusted names so that it works. But when I launch it on the new version I don’t get a resizable window on a desktop Does anyone know how to get the desktop on the ne…

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**Author:** ![brad.traver](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@brad.traver](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/brad.traver)\
**Post date:** [April 19, 2023, 8:59pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/xfce-windowing-issue-with-interactive-apps/2647/3 "2023-04-19T20:59:14Z")

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Jeff,

The addition of the `eval $(dbus-launch --sh-syntax)` command seems to have fixed the issue. I also reformatted my script as shown below:

```auto
# Configure VNC and XFCE
(
  #export XDG_CONFIG_DIRS="/etc/xdg/xfce4"
  export XDG_CONFIG_HOME="$HOME/.config/xfce4"
  export XDG_DATA_HOME="<%= session.staged_root.join("share") %>"
  export XDG_CACHE_HOME="$(mktemp -d)"
  export SEND_256_COLORS_TO_REMOTE=1
  eval $(dbus-launch --sh-syntax)
  xfwm4 --compositor=off --sm-client-disable &
  xsetroot -solid "#D9F6FF"
  xfsettingsd --sm-client-disable --daemon
  xfce4-panel --sm-client-disable
) &

```

I added the parenthesis and moved the & to the end.

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/osc/original/2X/b/bae70bd0ed39a3ae769c2108155f4cb3e9da8385.png) [@system](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [October 16, 2023, 8:59pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/xfce-windowing-issue-with-interactive-apps/2647/4 "2023-10-16T20:59:16Z")

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