XMonad mod key stops working during a session

Question

I have recently begun trying out XMonad on my Ubuntu 10.04 machine, and I have one major complaint. Oddly, I have not found the problem duplicated elsewhere on the web.

My XMonad session starts out peachy, but after 30 minutes or so, the mod key stops working. If I then want to turn off my computer...if Ihave a terminal open, I can run shutdown manually, but otherwise I have been using the hard power button to shut my computer off.

The failure of the mod key appears to occur after the screensaver has activated and I have subsequently deactivated it.

Can I provide any further information from my xmonad.hs or setup besides

...
, modMask = mod4Mask     -- Rebind Mod to the Windows key
...

?

Thanks in advance,

Jamie D

Answer 1

Usually this is because a dynamicLog is writing to a pipe handle that's not being read

http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Frequently_asked_questions#XMonad_is_frozen.21

Answer 2

I've been looking all over the place for a solution to this bug. Thanks user2751455. If anyone else is having this problem, this one liner (which is just a compressed form of what the linked FAQ says to do) should do the trick:

cat /proc/$(ps aux | grep [x]monad | cut -d" " -f4)/fd/* > /dev/null

a long-term fix would involve tweaking the xmonad.hs file so that it doesn't spawn pipes that go unread.