[BUG] some issues with Second Screen and XFCE

[hgw77]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Current Behavior

1. When add second screen Window Manager settings and window decoration broken

add a second screen the window decoration in XFCE breaks and the Window Manager settings are not working any more. I attached two screenshots, one before I start the second screen and the second with the marker what is broken after I started the second screen.

Solution is to run manually xfwm4 --replace & this brings back the window decoration and settings

2. Second screen no background image or right click for the context menu

it happens on the second browser-screen that the right click for the context menu is not working and also the background image is not there. Reload or resize the browser window (that triggers a refreshing) helps so the background image is rendered and than the context menu is also available. Note: The panel on the top is always available and also the right click on the panel is working.

3. When add second screen Critical error occurred

when I open the second screen it happens that I can see on the bottom the message Critical error occurred, resetting to default settings reloading for multiple times and after some retries and flickering the second screen is working. This can also happen when I try to resize the browser window that triggers a rendering or when I move a window on the remote desktop from the first to the second screen. It always recovers after some retries. In the log I cannot see errors. Only that the connection was re-established multiple times.

4. Desktop stops working and I can see Waiting for stream...

when I play to much with reload and resize it can happen that the whole desktop stops working and I can see Waiting for stream... in the browser. In the log I can see INFO:data_websocket:Data WebSocket connected than some log without error and after that WS connection closed.. The only way to fix it is to restart the docker container

Note: I test with docker but my use case is to run the webtop container in k3s/k8s. About issue 3 and 4, these issues happens more often when I run my webtop behind ingress/nginx. Maybe it is some kind of websocket connection problem?

Expected Behavior

No response

Steps To Reproduce

add a second screen on XFCE

Environment

Linux 6.1.0-39-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.1.148-1 (2025-08-26) x86_64 GNU/Linux
Chromium 140.0.7339.186

Docker creation

docker run --rm   --runtime nvidia   --gpus all   --privileged   --name=webtop   --security-opt seccomp=unconfined   -p 3001:3001   --shm-size="1gb" lscr.io/linuxserver/webtop:debian-xfce-1082dad9-ls160

Container logs

INFO:data_websocket:Attempting to establish PulseAudio connection... 
INFO:data_websocket:PulseAudio connection established. 
INFO:data_websocket:Client is taking over existing display 'primary'. Updating state for new connection. 
INFO:data_websocket:Applying and sanitizing client settings for 'primary' (initial=True) 
INFO:data_websocket:Stats sender: WS connection closed.

[thelamer]

The Stream resetting looks to be a race condition in second screen config and it parsing its first keyframe.

I do not have a good solution for the blank desktop in xfce and it resetting the wallpaper, that might be one of those just how xfce handles us chopping up the screen things and replacing their default window manager.

The openbox replace is unavoidable as without it fullscreening windows spans both monitors in xfce and KDE. The issue of going back automatically when we are one monitor will likely not be fixed and may never be. That was something I spent a lot of dev time on for second display. The replace command can fail and even if it does not fail detecting it up and running can be over 10 seconds sometimes even if we manually kill openbox before replacing.

Just letting you know main focus is on getting the launch and render 100% reliable along with the second screen settings sticking and resizing content properly for window size. Those are both regressions when I added the authoritative settings.

[thelamer]

Please test this image it corrects a series of bugs around settings persistence and second screen.

This is not going to fix XFCE oddities but it is the second monitor fixes that will make a waterfall this weekend.

docker run --rm -it -p 3001:3001 --shm-size=1gb taisun/random-images:chromium-preview  bash

[hgw77]

Second screen is coming up without flickering. Tested also to play a youtube video and moved the browser window from left to right and this is working very well 👍

I tested also with nvidia runtime but this image is not working with that. I see only waiting for stream and on the log that the websocket session was closed.

[thelamer]

Please retest when you get a chance:

docker run --rm -it -p 3001:3001 --shm-size=1gb taisun/random-images:chromium-preview-bugfixes  bash

And thanks for testing.

[hgw77]

No problem I would be happy to help you with testing👍

1. open youtube and played a video
2. resize the window
3. moved it to the second screen and back with playing the video
4. maximized the window on the second screen and closed the second screen
5. the window comes maximized back to the first screen when the second screen was closed
6. open two windows and move it to the second screen and than close the second screen
7. the windows are not optimal moved back to the second screen (see images attached)

Second Screen:

First Screen after Second Screen was closed

[thelamer]

I cannot fix that, window placement is DE specific and basically a big mess. Openbox has "smart" placement that does this:
https://github.com/danakj/openbox/blob/9e8813e111cbe6c1088f6abbc771a29470f05fc2/data/rc.xml#L33-L49

No combination of mouse active or primary will change this behavior, unless you pin to the top left like we used to but disabled it as people complained about popup windows being in the wrong place.

[thelamer]

#92

[hgw77]

ok, no problem, I just wanted to report this behavior if it is not known

[thelamer]

DE specific behavior for multiple monitors will always be kind of a crap shoot across distros and DEs right now this is the solution, we break up the screen with xrandr and run multiple seperate pixelflux pipes for those virtual regions. XVFB is not capable of reporting a real hardware device monitor so that path is out and we are stuck with virtual monitors.
Stuff like compiz and xinerama existed for these purposes but again are not something we can integrate universally.

If something is discovered where you can run some bash commands or something I am all ears but the second display solution will be like this until then.