Public bug reported:
Binary package hint: gnome-panel
It appears that my fresh install of ubuntu 7.04 laid down a faulty
/usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0.1200.11 file. That's bad (installer media did
verify ok). But that's not what I'm intending to report here.
The file was present and had the correct size and date, but had
different binary contents than the same file on (what should have been)
an identical system.
On the system with the bad glib file, gnome-terminal would not start.
Eventually I discovered it was segfaulting. And after much much more
sleuthing I finally discovered the libglib file issue.
Attempting to launch gnome-terminal I got the familiar progress cursor
for a little while, and then nothing. Why did I not get an error
message? That is my RFE.
I had to eventually launch xterm, and from that try manually launching
gnome-terminal from a command line, to see that it was segfaulting.
It further appeared that the glib problem was common to all applications
that were trying to use the VTE library. Apparrently this includes
update-manager, which was also very silently failing to do its job --
the update selection window would come up, but clicking the "go" button
or whatever ultimately did nothing, not even issue an error message.
Again, it is not my intention to report this as anything other than an
RFE that gnome app launches which segfault should not be die silently,
but should report to the user an error message describing what happened.
It surprises me very much that they do not, and also that I found no
other such RFE.
Note: I do not feel it would be reasonable to think that since the root
issue was a messed up glib binary that such issues cannot be addressed.
These things *do* happen and they *do* need to be dealt with as best as
possible if we are going to have a system which is truly usuable by
everybody and their mom.
Maybe gnome was indeed trying to show me an error message, but maybe the
program it was trying to use to do *that* was also segfaulting (maybe
because it too was trying to use VTE?). Even then, there should have
been a message somewhere. I saw nothing in sytem logs (was I not
looking in the right place? Where should I have been looking?). And
the error notification system should have some resilience to its own
failure, e.g., reverting to a simple xlib dialog in case its fancy
gnome-based UI does not init.
In case anyone gets here because they are having a similar problem with
silently dying gnome-terminal, try sudo apt-get install --reinstall
libglib2.0-0; that fixed the issue for me. You may very well have other
problems. Look into debsums.
** Affects: gnome-panel (Ubuntu)
Importance: Undecided
Status: Unconfirmed
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RFE: launchers should not silently fail when the launched app segfaults
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/112381
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Desktop Bugs, which is a bug contact for gnome-panel in ubuntu.
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