PCManFM
PCManFM is "an extremely fast, lightweight, yet feature-rich file manager with tabbed browsing". Source: PCManFM on sourceforge. PCManFM is the default file manager of the LXDE (Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment).
Contents
- 1 Installation
- 2 Volume handling
- 3 Tips
- 4 Troubleshooting
- 4.1 No "Applications"
- 4.2 No icons
- 4.3 gnome-open opens "Find" dialog instead of the directory
- 4.4 No "Previous/Next Folder" functionality with mouse buttons
- 4.5 One click for open folders and files
- 4.6 --desktop parameter not working/crashing X-server
- 4.7 Terminal emulator advanced configuration not saved
- 4.8 Make PCManFM remember your preferred Sort Files settings
- 4.9 "Not authorized" errors when accessing/mounting USB drives
- 5 Known Issues
Installation
pcmanfm is available in the official repositories.
You will also require gamin (a replacement for FAM, which required a daemon) to pick up events such as file and directories changes.
Notable variants
- A Qt implementation called pcmanfm-qtAUR exists in AUR.
- There are also development versions: pcmanfm-gitAUR and pcmanfm-qt-gitAUR.
Volume handling
PCManFM is able to mount and unmount devices, both manually and automatically. This feature is offered as an alternative to CLI tools such as udevil and pmountAUR.
Auto mounting USB external storage devices
To auto mount USB external storage devices only simply install gvfs.
If they do not auto mount after installing, try rebooting your system and try again.
Mounting with udisks
The current release of PCManFM is able to handle volumes through udisks. If you want to use this feature, make sure the D-Bus daemon is installed and running. See the D-Bus page for details.
NTFS read/write support
Install ntfs-3g (See NTFS-3G).
To resolve the "Operation not supported" error when clicking on Trash Can, you must do the following steps:
- Install package gvfs.
- Start PCManFM only using the following command: dbus-launch pcmanfm.
To browse network shares:
- Install these packages: gvfs gvfs-smb gvfs-afp.
- Start PCManFM only using the following command:
$ dbus-launch pcmanfm
. - Type
smb://server name/share name
to access Windows/CIFS/Samba file shares. - Type
afp://server name/share name
to access AFP file shares.
Tips
One click for open folders and files
Open PCManFM in file explorer mode, and go to Edit > Preferences and in General > Behavior and select Open files with a simple click.
Troubleshooting
No "Applications"
First install gnome-menus.
You can try this method: Delete all files in the $HOME/.cache/menus
directory, and run PCManFM again.
PCManFM requires the environment variable "XDG_MENU_PREFIX" to be set. The value of the variable should match the beginning of a file present in the /etc/xdg/menus/
directory. In case you have installed the gnome-menus package, you can set the value in your .xinitrc
file with the line :
export XDG_MENU_PREFIX=gnome-
See these threads for more informations : [1], and especially this post from the Linux Mint Forums [2]
No icons
If you are using a WM instead of a DE and you have no icons for folders and files, specify a gtk+ icon theme.
If you have e.g. oxygen-icons installed, edit ~/.gtkrc-2.0
or /etc/gtk-2.0/gtkrc
and add the following line:
gtk-icon-theme-name = "oxygen"
Else, use an different one (gnome, hicolor, and locolor do not work). To list all installed icon themes:
$ ls ~/.icons/ /usr/share/icons/
If none of them is suitable, install one. To list all installable icon packages:
$ pacman -Ss icon-theme
gnome-open opens "Find" dialog instead of the directory
Remove or rename the file /usr/share/applications/pcmanfm-find.desktop
. If you're running pcmanfm-mod from AUR, remove or rename the file /usr/share/applications/pcmanfm-mod-find.desktop
.
No "Previous/Next Folder" functionality with mouse buttons
A method to fix this is with Xbindkeys.
Install xbindkeys and edit ~/.xbindkeysrc
to contain the following:
# Sample .xbindkeysrc for a G9x mouse. "/usr/bin/xvkbd -text '\[Alt_L]\[Left]'" b:8 "/usr/bin/xvkbd -text '\[Alt_L]\[Right]'" b:9
Actual button codes can be obtained with package xorg-xev.
Add:
xbindkeys &
to your ~/.xinitrc
to execute xbindkeys on log-in.
One click for open folders and files
Open PCManFM in file explorer mode, go to Edit > Preferences > General > Behavior select Open files with a simple click.
pcmanfm --desktop
too.--desktop parameter not working/crashing X-server
Make sure you have ownership and write permissions on ~/.config/pcmanfm
.
Setting the wallpaper either by using the --desktop-pref parameter or editing ~/.config/pcmanfm/default/pcmanfm.config
solves the problem.
Terminal emulator advanced configuration not saved
Make sure you have rights on libfm configuration file:
$ chmod -R 755 ~/.config/libfm $ chmod 777 ~/.config/libfm/libfm.conf
Make PCManFM remember your preferred Sort Files settings
You can use View > Sort Files to change the order in which PCManFM lists the files, but PCManFM won't remember that the next time you start it. To make it remember, go to Edit > Preferences and close. That will write your current sort_type and sort_by values into ~/.config/pcmanfm/LXDE/pcmanfm.conf
.
"Not authorized" errors when accessing/mounting USB drives
In various window managers (when using with PolicyKit), you might receive a "not authorized" error when trying to access a USB drive.
Edit or create /etc/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.udisks2.pkla
to contain the following:
[Storage Permissions] Identity=unix-group:storage Action=org.freedesktop.udisks2.filesystem-mount;org.freedesktop.udisks2.modify-device ResultAny=yes ResultInactive=yes ResultActive=yes
/etc/polkit-1/actions/
does not exist by default.Known Issues
Custom folder icons in $HOME
Currently it looks like PCmanFM doesn't support this: