Subject: FVWM: what are these files accumulating in my home directory?

From: [email-masked]
Date: Sat, 12 Apr 2003 15:14:53 -0500

Hi all.. I just noticed a bunch of files in my home directory, some dated april 5 and some dated april 6.

.fs-1Bcg6g  .fs-KIcqgd  .fs-W9Mipb  .fs-ZSId7T  .fs-elA36G  .fs-xCJHn7
.fs-4zloCf  .fs-QYmhbz  .fs-XsXBdJ  .fs-aNDjJU  .fs-mj7eCo
.fs-Iax3Vl  .fs-R7G6ba  .fs-YvMUNE  .fs-cNAFwj  .fs-nkAz1C

I opened some in emacs and at the top of each files it says:

# This file is generated by fvwm. It stores global and window states.
# Normally, you must never delete this file, it will be auto-deleted.

Does anyone know what these are and why they were not deleted? Is it safe for me to delete them?

thanks!

Jim

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---

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 14 Apr 2003 12:55:47 +0000

> Does anyone know what these are and why they were not deleted? Is it safe for me to delete them?

When you use a session manager (like gnome-session), fvwm stores its
state in a file named like this. This includes for example the current
page, which windows are shaded/iconified/maximized, the geometries of the
windows running and so on. You may have several sessions (currently
active or non active) with fvwm running, so it is difficult to say
whether these files will be still used in the future or not.

Usually such file is removed automatically when a session manager
discards fvwm from a session. But in some (probably abnormal) situations
this file may be not removed. In this case, you may remove it yourself.

BTW, if you use xsm (another session manager) you should define
SESSION_MANAGER_NAME=xsm before running fvwm (or better yet before
running xsm). Otherwise this file will not be removed, because xsm is not
fully conforming and this is a workaround documented in our man page.

Regards,
Mikhael.