Bug#1087173: xbrlapi: startup of xblrapi prevent Gnome on Xorg to start

[earth3n7essel at gmail.com]

Hello,

I appear to have reproduced this issue on Kali rolling with a newer xbrlapi/brltty package version than the original report.

Environment:

- Distribution: Kali rolling
- Desktop environment: XFCE
- Display manager: LightDM
- Session type: X11
- xbrlapi package version before workaround: 6.9.1-1
- Package state before workaround: xbrlapi installed, brltty not installed
- Relevant Xsession script: /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90xbrlapi

Symptom:

The system reached graphical.target quickly, but after graphical login the desktop appeared to stall before XFCE’s core desktop clients launched.

Boot timing was not the issue:

  Startup finished in 3.151s (kernel) + 5.686s (userspace) = 8.838s
  graphical.target reached after 5.685s in userspace

Before removing xbrlapi, the graphical login/session timeline showed:

  12:18:12  lightdm --session-child started
  12:18:16  gnome-keyring-daemon started
  12:18:16  xfce4-session started
  12:20:31  xfwm4 started
  12:20:31  xfsettingsd started
  12:20:31  xfce4-panel started
  12:20:31  xfdesktop started

So xfce4-session started, but the core XFCE desktop clients did not launch until approximately 135 seconds later.

After purging xbrlapi and rebooting, the same session startup path became fast:

  12:33:00  lightdm --session-child started
  12:33:03  gnome-keyring-daemon started
  12:33:03  xfce4-session started
  12:33:04  xfwm4 started
  12:33:04  xfsettingsd started
  12:33:04  xfce4-panel started
  12:33:04  xfdesktop started

So the delay collapsed from approximately 135 seconds to approximately 1 second.

This appears consistent with the earlier finding in this bug: xbrlapi can block the Xsession startup path when brltty is absent.

Additional details:

- /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90xbrlapi was present before the workaround.
- The xbrlapi package was installed, but brltty was not.
- Purging xbrlapi removed the startup delay.
- The issue was observed with XFCE under LightDM/X11 rather than GNOME/GDM, but the symptom and workaround appear to match this bug closely.

I am adding this as a data point because the issue appears to still affect newer package versions, at least in Kali rolling, which imports the Debian brltty/xbrlapi packaging.

Regards,
earthenvessel