[winswitch] Libreoffice refuses to start after first time

[Antoine Martin]

On 02/09/2021 16:38, Luca Manganelli via shifter-users wrote:
> Hello,
> 
> is it normal that Libreoffice doesn't start anymore, after the first time?
> I killed all relevant processes, but it didn't start after all.
You haven't specified your versions or OS, so I can't try to reproduce
the problem.

My guess is that you haven't actually killed *all* the processes that
libreoffice had created the first time you ran it and if the display
that you ran it on is still active then it may try to spawn the new copy
on that same display.
This is a "feature" of many applications, especially browsers.

If the problem doesn't occur with more simple test applications ('xterm'
is always the go-to reference for testing) then it's clearly this
particular application's behaviour that is causing the problem, rather
than xpra itself.

For some applications, there are tricks that can be used to obtain the
desired behaviour - that is, to make it start on the new session:
* some applications have command line switches for doing that (some
browsers have "profiles")
* some environment variables can be used to trick the application into
believing that it is running for the first time
* more advanced tricks can use temporary users, containers and such.

But bear in mind that those are tricks and may cause further problems
down the line.

Cheers,
Antoine