switching window managers with Gnome 2.24.3 (and its session bug)

[George Hartzell]

Joe Marcus Clarke writes:
 > On Mon, 2009-01-19 at 18:56 -0800, George Hartzell wrote:
 > > Joe Marcus Clarke writes:
 > >  > On Mon, 2009-01-19 at 15:26 -0800, George Hartzell wrote:
 > >  > > I'm fond of sawfish.  I upgraded to 2.24.3 over the weekend and now
 > >  > > can't seem to convince it to let me switch from metacity to sawfish.
 > >  > > 
 > >  > > I run my X session using startx, which exec's a gnome-session.
 > >  > > 
 > >  > > I've used the technique described in item 9 of the FAQ (kill metacity,
 > >  > > start sawfish, use gnome-session to save things) to no avail.
 > >  > > 
 > >  > > I'm assuming that it not working is related to the problem with
 > >  > > session management in Gnome 2.24 (see item 4 in the faq224.html).
 > >  > > 
 > >  > > As described here:
 > >  > > 
 > >  > >   http://damumbl.byteholder.de/blog/?p=44
 > >  > 
 > >  > Yes this is the problem.
 > >  > 
 > >  > > 
 > >  > > I've tried changing the gconf key:
 > >  > > 
 > >  > >   /desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager/current
 > >  > > 
 > >  > > to sawfish but I end up without a window manager and a message on my
 > >  > > console from gnome-session that says:
 > >  > > 
 > >  > >   gnome-session[80010]: WARNING: Unable to find provider 'sawfish' of
 > >  > >   required component 'windowmanager'.
 > >  > > 
 > >  > > After messing around a bit I finally got it to work by copying 
 > >  > > 
 > >  > >   /usr/local/share/gnome/wm-properties/Sawfish.desktop
 > >  > > 
 > >  > > to
 > >  > > 
 > >  > >   ~/.local/share/applications/sawfish.desktop
 > >  > > 
 > >  > > and there was much joy.
 > >  > > 
 > >  > > Simple renaming Sawfish.desktop to sawfish.desktop in the original
 > >  > > directory didn't seem to have any effect.
 > >  > 
 > >  > The two are very different.  You could have copied it
 > >  > to /usr/local/share/applications, though for the same effect.
 > >  > 
 > >  > Hopefully this session management stuff will be sorted out in GNOME
 > >  > 2.26.
 > > 
 > > Maybe someone could update
 > > 
 > >   http://www.freebsd.org/gnome/docs/faq2.html#q9
 > > 
 > > with a note about the work around?
 > 
 > Without creating any additional files, what happens if you
 > set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/window_manager to
 > "sawfish"?

Actually, I mispoke in my original post in the thread (I'd tried a
bunch of things to get this working).

The variable that I have changed is:

   /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/window_manager

which I've set to

   sawfish

and without placing a copy of Sawfish.desktop into
~/.local/share/applications/sawfish.desktop I get this:

  gnome-session[80010]: WARNING: Unable to find provider 'sawfish' of
  required component 'windowmanager'.

I just tested placing a copy in
/usr/local/share/applications/sawfish.desktop and that seems to work
too.

g.