Michael Crute schreef:
On 9/10/05, *Dave Nebinger* [EMAIL PROTECTED]
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
A google search turned up another message:
I had this too after I botched a VNC install. I solved it by
purging /tmp and all the config files in my home directory. There
is probably a better way but it was a new install and I didn't have
my files on it anyhow. So try creating a new user with a new home
directory and see if that fixes things.
Don't know if that applies to you, though.
Hmm... feeling some dejavu with that quote. Odd. Anyhow in that one I
wasn't quite talking about this issue. The times I have had this
happen are when I do something to crash Gnome. Typically a sudo
killall gnome-panel from a regular terminal is all it takes to fix
this.
-Mike
Yes, but that doesn't necessarily fix it permanently, depending on your
settings.
Here's the deal (afaik, based on my long experience with GNOME):
One of 2 variations of the same situation seem to cause this issue:
1) there is a previously crashed panel (zombie) trying to start when the
session is loaded;
2) there is a previously crashed panel applet (zombie) trying to start
an instance of the panel when the session is loaded.
The overall issue is that the gnome-panel is always set to 'restart' in
the session manager (so if it crashes, the panel would automatically
attempt to restart, as you don't have much of a GNOME desktop without
the panel), and (of course), any panel applet that wants to run is going
to attempt to start the panel (because the applet depends on the panel
running).
The secondary issue is your individual settings for 'save session on
exit'. If the last saved session contains this zombie process, it's
going to attempt to restart whenever you login, because that's what the
purpose of the saved session is (to restore the session as it was when
saved, irrespective of its state of cleanliness).
So what has to be done is that the saved session itself has to be
cleaned of this zombie process. The problem is that much of the time,
these zombie processes do not appear in any system monitor (under
'normal' circumstances).
Two ways to do this (I find 'the long way' more reliable, but both
should theoretically work):
1) Go to GNOME Control Center = Advanced = Sessions and find out what
your session save settings are in the first place.
The short way: Set the session save to 'ask me on logout'
The long way: Turn off all session saving.
If you're going the short way, now do a killall -9 gnome-panel in a
terminal. This should be sufficient if the problem is a crashed panel,
but it won't necessarily be if the problem is a crashed applet. For
example, I normally have this problem when I first install GNOME, and
the mixer applet-- which is a default applet-- crashes due to not being
yet properly set. The mixer applet is default, so it's always going to
attempt to start, and when I get the settings fixed, it will start
normally, but prior to that I probably got a message that the mixer
applet was crashed and do I want to remove it from the panel layout?
Well of course I don't, *but* what seems to really happen is that when I
correct the settings in the Sound area of the Control Panel or whatever,
the 'original' applet doesn't get fixed and start, but a new, fixed
instance of the applet starts. So the original crashed applet that I
didn't remove is trying to start an instance of the panel, and the new,
working instance of the applet is trying to start a panel. The solution
to this is usually to remove all instances of the applet (which may
require going to gconf-editor to fix the crashed one, since I didn't
take the layout out of there when I had the chance), and add the applet
back to the panel (so that one instance only is requested), and save the
session (so that the session where both applets are attempting to start
is overwritten).
Yeah, OK, the 'short way' isn't all that short, but GNOME can be fairly
obtuse at times.
Log out and explicitly save the session, then log back in. If the
problem was simply a zombie instance of the panel, it should now not
attempt to restart, and the 'regular' panel should start normally
(although this has never really worked for me, it's *supposed* to). You
can then set your Session settings back to 'automatically save session
on exit' or whatever you like.
The long way:
Log out (you've turned off session saving, so your current settings will
not be saved again).
Log back in to the 'GNOME failsafe session', which should be listed in
your list of sessions if you use GDM. If you use KDM, I'm not sure, and
I'm also not sure how you get into it using startx (I'd have to look in
my sessions folder, which I'll do after I finish this).
The idea of the failsafe session is that it's not going to run any
'startup scripts' (whatever those are for GNOME), but just the
essentials of the default session. In any case, whatever it means, the
result as I have seen it is that:
1)
