Where did the white orchid come from?

Asked by David A. Cobb

This is just plain weird!

Running Natty. More or less up-to-date. XFCE4 (XUbuntu) because of low resources.

Following a recent (2012-01-03) batch of upgrades, my XFCE4 desktop has developed a very strange behavior:
My "normal" background is a picture I copied into /usr/share/xfce4/backdrops/. After the upgrade --
(1) If I click on the "Home Folder" panel launcher, I expect my "$HOME" to display pretty quickly; instead the system sits and thinks for a noticeably long time, then it replaces my desktop with a close-up of a white orchid - with folders from my real desktop but no panels. After "a while" the orchid goes away, and the desired File-Manager window comes up.
Also, when I log out, the orchid comes back up for a few moments before the whole graphic desktop shuts down and restarts.

I tracked down the file containing the orchid:
  $HOME/.cache/wallpaper/zoom_1280_1024__usr_share_backgrounds_WhiteOrchid.jpg.
At first, I renamed that file as though it was a backup (added fore and aft '~' to the name). It just now came back with its original name.

There's a good clue there to the location of the original. But I didn't ask for that one, and I have no idea why it could be popping up when it does!

Please, did the logic in the XFCE4 desktop change so drastically? Or, does it look as though I have a really screwed-up configuration file somewhere? The strange time of it's appearance rather points to the File Manager.

By the way, this is limited to my own desktop. My wife, for example, never sees this.

TIA

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Chris (fabricator4) said :
#1

I'm not too surprised that the file came back. .cache is just a scratch area where configuration and transitional data gets written by applications. It's not where the original file would be coming from.

I haven't used Xubuntu except briefly to have a look at it, but is seems that the file manager is thunar. Further research indicates that the directory for thunar config files is ~/.config/thunar.

I'd agree that the most likely problem is a really messed up config file, and the problem seems to be triggered by starting thunar so start there.

I think you should be able to safely delete the entire thunar config file and have it recreated the next time you start thunar, but back it up first if it makes you feel safer.

Chris

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