What flips Conky's transparent background to a solid color?

[houndstooth]

This happens unintentionally:

[bigpup]

What Puppy version are you using?

Conky has never been 100% perfect.

It has done this to me in Bookworm Pup64

I did this to fix it.

Run JWMdesk -> Conky settings -> Functions -> Restart

[wizard]

This looks like Fossapup64 9.5, if so, the transparent background is controlled by:
Menu>Desktop>JWMDESK Manager>Windows Effects. If that is disabled you will get a solid background.
Note that this would also apply to F96, but not to Bookworm

wizard

[bigpup]

One thing that I have noticed.

Conky will show on the desktop and not be transparent.

After a little time passes, it changes to transparent.

All the settings for it are in the conkyrc file.

Easy way to access is by using the JWMDesk -> Conky Settings -> Edit conkyrc

Looking at Conky help, the section on transparency.

I do wonder why settings needed for transparency, in conkyrc, do not exactly match what the Conky help says to use??

[rockedge]

@bigpup the transparency is sometimes only a simulation. It depends also on the compositor used.

[wizard]

the transparency is sometimes only a simulation

Think in Bookworm Pup64 RC, Conky does not use a compositor, instead it uses a technique to take a shot of the desktop behind it, then use that as the background for Conky, which gives the illusion of transparency.

wizard

[houndstooth]

This looks like Fossapup64 9.5, if so, the transparent background is controlled by:
Menu>Desktop>JWMDESK Manager>Windows Effects. If that is disabled you will get a solid background.
Note that this would also apply to F96, but not to Bookworm

I haven't learned how to prevent losing Conky's background, it's triggered by common actions, like activating xlock, but restarting Window Effects restores it.

[fernan]

In some of my Puppy installs, to make Conky transparent, I had to open any folder, right-click on the "eye" icon on the Rox task bar to create thumbnails, click again to deactivate, and conky becomes transparent again.

In other computers, I removed the conkystart script from the /root/Startup/ folder, located in other folder, added a link to the desktop, and started it manually after the system is up for some seconds. That way, Conky starts transparent.

[houndstooth]

@fernan Autostart is a handy shortcut but simply restores the default backdrop from a blank pinboard background.

Thumbnails don't make a difference.

The remedy is still restarting Windows Effects but the solution is in the cause.

Like xlock, another trigger is the Exit -> Shut Down sequence.

[TerryH]

I don't currently have a FossaPup installation, the following may work on FossaPup.

When I used to have problems with transparency, it was identified the actual program which sets the wallpaper is a program set_bg. (You can check if set_bg is in Fossapup by running which set_bg in a terminal). When run from a terminal it will set the wallpaper. If you use the existing image shown in the Puppypin. You can pass a different file name, which will also update the image stored in the PupyPin. Running this will set the wallpaper, which should then fix the transparency problem. Run the program in a terminal: set_bg /path/to/image

Example:
set_bg /usr/share/backgrounds/default.png

Edit: Running the program without passing an Image file to the program will wipe out the wallpaper. It is easily corrected by passing a valid file name or using the wallpaper update program in the Desktop Menu