Sometimes the Super/Meta key crashes/closes my lightdm session

Support
1

Hi, I’m not sure where to put this because I can’t really figure out why this is happening. For the past year I’ve had to deal with my lightdm session closing or crashing because of pressing the start button on the keyboard. I do not know exactly what I have done if anything to cause this, recently I reinstalled lightdm, whisker menu and my graphics drivers but nothing has helped. These crashes do not always happen when I press the start button on my keyboard, but they seem to only happen when I press it. What will happen is I press the start button and it doesn’t show up, then about a quarter of a second later the screen goes blank and I have to start pressing down keys to get to a terminal, or CTRL + ALT + F6 seems to bring back my session. I would really appreciate some help, thanks.

I’m using Xfce, not sure if that makes any difference.

2

This might sound really dumb, but:
what is

?

I do run Xfce4 myself and know pretty well how it behaves and how to make it behave a certain way.

3

The button between left ctrl and left alt, it brings up the whisker menu.

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From OP description I would suspect that the Super_L key is not launching whisker menu

$ xfconf-query -c xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts -lv | grep 'Super_L'
/commands/custom/Super_L                   xfce4-popup-whiskermenu

This is not a standard Xfce shortcut and could have been removed either when packages were reinstalled or if Application Shortcuts were reset to default

5

Ok, I binded “Super L” to “xfce4-popup-whiskermenu” and now every time I press it my screen goes blank and I have to press CTRL + ALT F7 to get back. I undid the binding but it still goes to a blank screen each time. I don’t see any other bindings that could be doing this either.

6

Try launching xfce4-popup-whiskermenu from terminal and see if there are any error messages

1 Like
7

Didn’t get any.

8

I suggest:

  1. Launch xfce4-settings-keyboard and click Reset to Defaults in Application Shortcuts tab

  2. Launch xfce4-session-settings and if there is a Saved Sessions tab, click Clear Saved Sessions
    and uncheck Automatically save sessions on logout in General tab

  3. Reboot system and check if the Super_L key crashes/closes session

9

Ah.
All sorts of names for that.
On most keyboards this will be the button labelled with the “Windows” logo.
On my keyboard, there are two buttons in between these.
… the Fn key and, to the right of it, the “Windows” key …

It is what is generally used (in Xfce4 too) to bring up the “start menu”

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Yes, that is the windows button. Except on Tuxedos, where it is the penguin button :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes: As the OP said start, i thought of the power button, but he meant start as the start-menu.

The current state is bit of a mystery to me. Years ago, ctrl+esc opened the menu. At some point that changed, now ctrl+esc opens an application menu under the mouse, and the windows button opens whisker “start” menu. Interestingly, i do not see where this is defined. I know the key bindings are in the keyboard settings applet, and in the window manager settings. This key combo is however not there. Maybe it is built in and not changeable…i do not know.

Not that this helps in the case.

11

It seems to have solved the issue, thanks.

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