On Sunday 28 December 2014, dep wrote:
> sorry to be such a bother, but as long as i'm bringing things up, here's 
> one that has been an issue for a couple of years and survived into R14.
> 
> my desktop crashes, but in such a way as to not even be noticeable at 
> first.
> 
> i have in lieu of wallpaper xplanet set up as a realtime moon phase 
> indicator, updating hourly. the way i tell the desktop has crashed is that 
> it doesn't update -- in this case it last refreshed at 10:30 a.m. 
> yesterday. i believe that i was probably editing pictures at that time, 
> though would not swear to it.
> 
> after it crashes, a right click on the desktop does not produce the 
> expected menu. as it happens, kicker and everything else continues to 
> function as expected -- in fact, it was just now that i noticed that the 
> desktop itself had gone south.
> 
> i thought i'd look in the x error log, bit i see that the one i have, 
> ~/.xsession-errors, is of an unspecified file type and won't open in a 
> text editor (it reports its size as 500.0 k).
> 
> any idea if there's a log that might let me see what's going on here and if 
> so what log it might be? bonus points, how i might restart the desktop 
> without logging out and back in? extra bonus points, how i might fix it so 
> it doesn't do this anymore? i'm running some flavor of ubuntu 12.04LTS -- 
> i say some flavor because when i sought to upgrade a few days ago the 
> ubuntu upgrader refused, citing third-party apps or a beta version of the 
> opsys, or something; it didn't specify. i thought i had bog standard 
> 12.04LTS on the machine but am apparently wrong.

you might find hints following this thread:

http://trinity-users.pearsoncomputing.net/?0::6738

if the problem is the same. Here are some quotes:
On Friday 10 October 2014, Gerhard Zintel wrote:
> On Tuesday 07 October 2014, Slávek Banko wrote:
> > On Tuesday 07 of October 2014 11:34:25 Ilya Dogolazky wrote:
> > > Hi !
> > >
> > > I'm running trinity desktop on Debian Testing linux.
> > > Sometimes all the icons from desktop disappear and (at the same time!)
> > > the desktop lock button (blue lock symbol in the kicker panel) stops
> > > to work.
> > >
> > > What service/program to I have to restart in order to fix it without
> > > logging out and in again?
> > >
> > > Cheers
> > >
> > > Ilya Dogolazky
> > >
> > 
> > Disappearing icons from the desktop shows to crash KDesktop. Starting kdesktop 
> > should correct the problem.
> > 
> > At this situation please take a look into ~/.xsession-error, if there is 
> > listed a backtrace about KDesktop crash? It could help to detect and fix the 
> > problem.
> > 
> 
> Update:
> Today I faced the problem again. Unfortunately I did not look into the .xsession-errors file before I started to relaunch kdesktop. 
> Nevertheless it did not crash. First action: I started kdesktop from Konsole. It told me that kdesktop is already running but didn't
> come back to the prompt. Icons were not recreated. I had to Ctrl-C for the promt. "ps ax" showed me an old version of kdesktop
> and a second new one with <defunct> message. Killing the defunct one was not possible. I killed the original kdesktop program
> (Desktop went black) and relaunched it and - voila - the icons reapeared on the desktop. Also the defunct process of kdesktop
> was gone.     
> 
> I do not find anything special in the xsession errors file. I try to investigate more accurate next time.
> 
Hope this helps
Gerhard