Re: The .xsession-errors problem

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 28 Oct 2020 15:28:37 +1100
David <bouncingcats@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Wed, 28 Oct 2020 at 00:45, Andrei POPESCU <andreimpopescu@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Ma, 27 oct 20, 07:55:00, Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > On Mon, Oct 26, 2020 at 11:07:37PM +0000, Tixy wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 2020-10-26 at 18:35 +0200, Teemu Likonen wrote:
> 
> > > > > It seems that ~/.xsession-errors file can still grow to infinity in
> > > > > size. Sometimes it grows really fast. This is nothing new: we have all
> > > > > seen it and talked about it. What do you do to maintain this file?
> 
> > > > Don't do anything here. The file is created fresh at each boot and is
> > > > 30 lines long [...]
> 
> > > Something that you're doing, or something that was done for you, is
> > > clearing that file.  Your case is not the default.  By default, that
> > > file is never cleared, and just keeps growing.  Most people prune it
> > > manually whenever they notice it getting bigger than they like, which
> > > is usually somewhere between "once a year" and "never".
> 
> > On my system the file is rotated (renamed to .xsession-errors.old), on
> > every login as far as I can tell.
> 
> > Didn't find (yet) what is doing this (using lightdm, LXDE and minimal
> > Xorg).
> 
> I had a curiosity about this, because some people are reporting that they
> need to manage their growing .xsession-errors file by various methods,
> but I never have seen this.
> 
> I see the same behaviour as Andrei, and I also use parts of LXDE.
> 
> I investigated, guided by this teaching from Reco:
> https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/04/msg00583.html
> 
> I found that the process that renames the file to .xsession-errors.old
> is the binary /usr/bin/lxsession owned by the user, with the parent
> process lightdm owned by root.
> 
> /usr/bin/lxsession is a component of LXDE, so this won't apply to
> users of other GUI providers.
> 
> The rename occurs when the user logs in from lightdm. The filename
> .xsession-errors is defined in the script file /etc/X11/Xsession

Interesting, but there seems to be more to the story than this. I use
xfce4 with lightdm, and I also have my .xsession-errors moved
to .xsession-errors.old when I log in via lightdm, even though I'm not
using lxde and lxsession doesn't exist on my system. I haven't tried
the audit method to see what's doing it.

Celejar