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I run Arch Linux with XFCE. Recently, I decided to switch to PCmanfm as my file manager. I removed Thunar with:

pacman -Rc thunar

and rebooted. Now when I try to log in, my XFCE4 desktop flashes for a second, then returns to my login manager (Slim). Reinstalling thunar does not help. How can I get my desktop working again? It's okay if it's with thunar for now, I just need a working setup, PCmanfm will come later.

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You shouldn't use the -c switch unless you really are sure of what you are doing. From man pacman:

-c, --cascade Remove all target packages, as well as all packages that depend on one or more target packages. This operation is recursive, and must be used with care since it can remove many potentially needed packages.

You have obviously removed a needed package (or packages). Look back through your pacman.log and see what packages were removed along with thunar and then reinstall them until you are back at your old set up.

In future, to remove dependencies, use the -s switch:

-s, --recursive Remove each target specified including all of their dependencies, provided that (A) they are not required by other packages; and (B) they were not explicitly installed by the user. This operation is recursive and analogous to a backwards --sync operation, and helps keep a clean system without orphans.

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It looks like I uninstalled xfdesktop thunar-volmon thunar-media-tags-plugin thunar-archive-plugin When I reinstalled these, it downloaded nothing, I figured they all installed when I did pacman -S thunar before. The error persists after reinstallation. – torajirou Jul 16 '11 at 7:55
pacman -S thunar is not a direct reversal of pacman -Rc thunar - make sure there is nothing else in the log. If not, then you will need to look through Slim's log (and probably Xorg.0.log) to determine why XFCE isn't loading. – jasonwryan Jul 16 '11 at 8:00

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