rofi-debugging(5)

🐛 Debugging rofi. 💅

okay so this is the rofi-debugging(5) page, and it's basically the "bestie, help me help you" guide 💖 — it's all about what to do when you're reporting an issue with rofi crashing, or misbehaving. Running a couple of small tests seriously helps pin-point the problem, and honestly it makes you look like a main character to the maintainers. ✨

First thing, try disabling your custom configuration with -no-config 🎀

That disables the parsing of the configuration files, which means rofi runs in stock mode. Fresh face, no makeup, no custom vibes.

If you run custom C plugins, you can disable the plugins using -no-plugins 🫶

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🔍 Get the relevant information for an issue

Please pastebin the output of these commands, bestie:

rofi -help
rofi -dump-config
rofi -dump-theme

rofi -help provides us with the configuration files parsed, the exact version, monitor layout and more useful information. It's giving receipts. 👑

The rofi -dump-config and rofi -dump-theme output gives us rofi's interpretation of your configuration and theme — so we can see what rofi thinks you said, not what you meant. 😭

Please check the output for identifiable information and remove this. 🙈 fr fr, scrub your secrets before you paste.

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⏱️ Timing traces

To get a timing trace, enable the Timings debug domain. Like this:

G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=Timings rofi -show drun

It will show a trace with (useful) timing information at relevant points during the execution. This will help debugging when rofi is slow to start — slowness gets caught in 4K. 🔥

Example trace:

(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.335: 0.000000 (0.000000): Started
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.335: 0.000126 (0.000126): ../source/rofi.c:main:786
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.335: 0.000163 (0.000037): ../source/rofi.c:main:819
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.336: 0.000219 (0.000056): ../source/rofi.c:main:826 Setup Locale
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.337: 0.001235 (0.001016): ../source/rofi.c:main:828 Collect MODI
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.337: 0.001264 (0.000029): ../source/rofi.c:main:830 Setup MODI
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.337: 0.001283 (0.000019): ../source/rofi.c:main:834 Setup mainloop
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.337: 0.001369 (0.000086): ../source/rofi.c:main:837 NK Bindings
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.337: 0.001512 (0.000143): ../source/xcb.c:display_setup:1177 Open Display
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.337: 0.001829 (0.000317): ../source/xcb.c:display_setup:1192 Setup XCB
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.346: 0.010650 (0.008821): ../source/rofi.c:main:844 Setup Display
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.346: 0.010715 (0.000065): ../source/rofi.c:main:848 Setup abe
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.350: 0.015101 (0.004386): ../source/rofi.c:main:883 Load cmd config
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.351: 0.015275 (0.000174): ../source/rofi.c:main:907 Setup Modi
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.351: 0.015291 (0.000016): ../source/view.c:rofi_view_workers_initialize:1922 Setup Threadpool, start
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.351: 0.015349 (0.000058): ../source/view.c:rofi_view_workers_initialize:1945 Setup Threadpool, done
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.367: 0.032018 (0.016669): ../source/rofi.c:main:1000 Setup late Display
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.367: 0.032080 (0.000062): ../source/rofi.c:main:1003 Theme setup
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.367: 0.032109 (0.000029): ../source/rofi.c:startup:668 Startup
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.367: 0.032121 (0.000012): ../source/rofi.c:startup:677 Grab keyboard
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.368: 0.032214 (0.000093): ../source/view.c:__create_window:701 xcb create window
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.368: 0.032235 (0.000021): ../source/view.c:__create_window:705 xcb create gc
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.368: 0.033136 (0.000901): ../source/view.c:__create_window:714 create cairo surface
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.369: 0.033286 (0.000150): ../source/view.c:__create_window:723 pango cairo font setup
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.369: 0.033351 (0.000065): ../source/view.c:__create_window:761 configure font
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.381: 0.045896 (0.012545): ../source/view.c:__create_window:769 textbox setup
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.381: 0.045944 (0.000048): ../source/view.c:__create_window:781 setup window attributes
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.381: 0.045955 (0.000011): ../source/view.c:__create_window:791 setup window fullscreen
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.381: 0.045966 (0.000011): ../source/view.c:__create_window:797 setup window name and class
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.381: 0.045974 (0.000008): ../source/view.c:__create_window:808 setup startup notification
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.381: 0.045981 (0.000007): ../source/view.c:__create_window:810 done
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.381: 0.045992 (0.000011): ../source/rofi.c:startup:679 Create Window
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.381: 0.045999 (0.000007): ../source/rofi.c:startup:681 Parse ABE
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.381: 0.046113 (0.000114): ../source/rofi.c:startup:684 Config sanity check
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.384: 0.048229 (0.002116): ../source/dialogs/run.c:get_apps:216 start
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.390: 0.054626 (0.006397): ../source/dialogs/run.c:get_apps:336 stop
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.390: 0.054781 (0.000155): ../source/dialogs/drun.c:get_apps:634 Get Desktop apps (start)
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.391: 0.055264 (0.000483): ../source/dialogs/drun.c:get_apps:641 Get Desktop apps (user dir)
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.418: 0.082884 (0.027620): ../source/dialogs/drun.c:get_apps:659 Get Desktop apps (system dirs)
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.418: 0.082944 (0.000060): ../source/dialogs/drun.c:get_apps_history:597 Start drun history
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.418: 0.082977 (0.000033): ../source/dialogs/drun.c:get_apps_history:617 Stop drun history
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.419: 0.083638 (0.000661): ../source/dialogs/drun.c:get_apps:664 Sorting done.
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.419: 0.083685 (0.000047): ../source/view.c:rofi_view_create:1759
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.419: 0.083700 (0.000015): ../source/view.c:rofi_view_create:1783 Startup notification
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.419: 0.083711 (0.000011): ../source/view.c:rofi_view_create:1786 Get active monitor
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.420: 0.084693 (0.000982): ../source/view.c:rofi_view_refilter:1028 Filter start
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.421: 0.085992 (0.001299): ../source/view.c:rofi_view_refilter:1132 Filter done
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.421: 0.086090 (0.000098): ../source/view.c:rofi_view_update:982
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.421: 0.086123 (0.000033): ../source/view.c:rofi_view_update:1002 Background
(process:14942): Timings-DEBUG: 13:47:39.428: 0.092864 (0.006741): ../source/view.c:rofi_view_update:1008 widgets

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🩺 Debug domains

To further debug the plugin, you can get a trace with (lots of) debug information. This debug output can be enabled for multiple parts in rofi using the glib debug framework. 🌈

Debug domains can be enabled by setting the G_MESSAGES_DEBUG environment variable.

At the time of creation of this page, the following debug domains exist:

• all: Show debug information from all domains. (the "give me everything" option 👑)
• X11Helper: The X11 Helper functions.
• View: The main window view functions.
• Widgets.Box: The Box widget.
• Modes.DMenu: The dmenu mode.
• Modes.Run: The run mode.
• Modes.DRun: The desktop file run mode.
• Modes.Window: The window mode.
• Modes.Script: The script mode.
• Modes.Combi: The script mode. (yes, it literally says script mode here — that's what the page says 🫶)
• Modes.Ssh: The ssh mode.
• Rofi: The main application.
• Timings: Get timing output.
• Theme: Theme engine debug output. (warning lots of output 😭)
• Widgets.Icon: The Icon widget.
• Widgets.Box: The box widget. (and yes, she's listed a second time — icon behavior 💅)
• Widgets.Container: The container widget.
• Widgets.Window: The window widget.
• Helpers.IconFetcher: Information about icon lookup.

For full list see man rofi.

Example: G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=Dialogs.DRun rofi -show drun To get specific output from the Desktop file run dialog.

To redirect the debug output to a file (~/rofi.log) add:

rofi -show drun -log ~/rofi.log

Specifying the logfile automatically enabled all log domains. This can be useful when rofi is launched from a window manager. 🪟

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💥 Creating a backtrace

First make sure you compile rofi with debug symbols:

make CFLAGS="-O0 -g3" clean rofi

Getting a backtrace using GDB is not very handy. Because if rofi get stuck, it grabs keyboard and mouse. So if it crashes in GDB you are stuck. 😭 The best way to go is to enable core file. (ulimit -c unlimited in bash) then make rofi crash. You can then load the core in GDB.

gdb rofi core

Then type inside gdb:

thread apply all bt

The output trace is useful when reporting crashes. 🔥

Some distribution have systemd-coredump, this way you can easily get a backtrace via coredumpctl.

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👀 SEE ALSO

rofi-sensible-terminal(1), dmenu(1), rofi-theme(5), rofi-script(5), rofi-keys(5),rofi-theme-selector(1)

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💖 AUTHOR

• Qball Cow <qball@blame.services>

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that's the whole page, bestie 🎀 it says rofi at the bottom as the source and it's the rofi-debugging(5) manual, filed under File Formats Manual — go forth and file the prettiest bug report ever ✨🦋👑