Bug 144722

Summary: crash in Workspace Switcher applet at startup
Product: [openSUSE] SUSE LINUX 10.0 Reporter: Ulrich Windl <Ulrich.Windl>
Component: GNOMEAssignee: Dan Winship <danw>
Status: RESOLVED FIXED QA Contact: E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity: Normal    
Priority: P5 - None CC: mmeeks
Version: Final   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: Other   
OS: Other   
Whiteboard:
Found By: Other Services Priority:
Business Priority: Blocker: ---
Marketing QA Status: --- IT Deployment: ---
Attachments: ~/.xsession-errors
Output of "gconftool-2 -R /apps/panel"

Description Ulrich Windl 2006-01-23 07:36:47 UTC
When ever I start GNOME on an older system (400MHz), GNOME session menager reports several crashed applications. When I select to retry starting these applications, everything seems to be fine. Therefore I suspect the bug is in session manager: When applications do not appear quickly enough, session manager reports a crashed application (when in fact it did not start yet). Maybe the problem is also that too many applications are started at the same time, some of those being "fat & slow" (liek acroread, gnome-terminal, evolution).
Comment 1 JP Rosevear 2006-02-05 18:58:43 UTC
Can you attach .xsession-errors when the failures occur?
Comment 2 Ulrich Windl 2006-02-06 08:13:35 UTC
Created attachment 66494 [details]
~/.xsession-errors

Here's the file you wanted. However I'm afraid it doesn't contain what you hoped to see.
Comment 3 JP Rosevear 2006-02-10 20:31:07 UTC
Yah, not much there.  We put out a libbonobo update in the last few days, could you download and install it?
Comment 4 Ulrich Windl 2006-02-13 07:29:42 UTC
I did install all the recent updates (libbonobo-2.10.1-3.2). However when rebooting this morning, the same effect appeared. It seems GNOME is logging those "application crashes" nowhere!
Comment 5 Rodrigo Moya 2006-02-24 11:45:33 UTC
Which applications are failing?
Comment 6 Ulrich Windl 2006-02-24 12:53:26 UTC
The German titles are:
"Desktop anzeigen" (display desktop)
"Fensterliste" (window list)
"Arbeitsflächenumschalter" (desktop switcher)

Furthermore it seems the problem does not occur when logging out and back in (maybe the disk cache is fast enough then), but only after a reboot. It may be accidentially that, when it worked, the lower and upper panels were up already when the applets started, but the panels weren't when the warnings about crashed applets popped up.
Comment 7 JP Rosevear 2006-02-24 14:17:32 UTC
ok, so this is the wnck bassed applets.
Comment 8 Dan Winship 2006-03-02 21:17:37 UTC
Do you run the workspace switcher applet? (The one that lets you switch between
multiple desktops.) If you remove it from the panel, does the crash go away?

If so, is there anything odd about (a) the settings you have in the Preferences
of that applet, (b) your windowmanager preferences, (c) your monitor setup
(multiple monitors, etc)?

(This may be the same as bug 152735.)
Comment 9 Ulrich Windl 2006-03-03 07:36:43 UTC
Yes, I run the "workspace switcher applet" (isn't it default?). Before I remove it, I'll have to find out how to add it again (it's not in the applet menu).
Despite of that, I still think this is a timing issue, because during start I see the harddisk LED being "always on", indicating a busy system. I only have one monitor. In which format you'd like to see my settings?
Comment 10 Ulrich Windl 2006-03-03 07:37:41 UTC
BTW: "You are not authorized to access bug #152735."
Comment 11 Dan Winship 2006-03-03 14:19:53 UTC
You ought to be able to re-add it by doing right click -> Add to Panel, and
choosing the right applet. ("Arbeitsflächenumschalter" I guess.)

Yes, I'm sure this is a timing issue/race condition of some sort, I'm just
trying to narrow down *where* the timing issue is occurring.

For the settings, I guess just do "gconftool-2 -R /apps/panel > /tmp/settings"
and then attach that file. (This should show all of the panel settings, as well
as what applets and launchers you have on your panel and what settings they
have.)
Comment 12 Ulrich Windl 2006-03-06 07:20:27 UTC
Created attachment 71291 [details]
Output of "gconftool-2 -R /apps/panel"
Comment 13 Ulrich Windl 2006-03-06 07:35:27 UTC
Actually, it seems that removing the "Arbeitsflächenumschalter" fixed the problems.
Comment 14 Dan Winship 2006-03-06 15:59:24 UTC
*** Bug 152735 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 15 Dan Winship 2006-03-06 17:22:03 UTC
What version of libwnck do you have? Have you installed updated packages from
PLUS, and if so, did the bug only appear when you did that?

(I think I've found the bug, in one of our fairly recent patches.)
Comment 16 Dan Winship 2006-03-06 19:45:08 UTC
Please try http://primates.ximian.com/~danw/libwnck-2.12.2-14.i586.rpm and
let me know if that fixes the problem for you. (You ought to be able to add
back the Workspace Switcher and not get a crash.)
Comment 17 Ulrich Windl 2006-03-07 06:58:44 UTC
(In reply to comment #15)
> What version of libwnck do you have? Have you installed updated packages from
> PLUS, and if so, did the bug only appear when you did that?

libwnck-2.12.0-3
I don't know what "PLUS" is, but I did a YOU this week.
Comment 18 Ulrich Windl 2006-03-07 07:14:23 UTC
With the newer library startup went much smoother. However for statistical significance, I'd had to boot more than once to make sure ;-)
Comment 19 Dan Winship 2006-03-07 17:10:31 UTC
ok, i'll leave this NEEDINFO for a few days. let me know if the crash comes back.
Comment 20 Ulrich Windl 2006-03-13 06:57:27 UTC
On Friday I discovered an update for libnck that was flagges "optional" and not "recommened". Thus YOU did not install that automatically. I chose to install that (libwnck-2.12.0-3.2). That version does not fix the problem. So I guess the version from comment #16 is actually needed.
Comment 21 Dan Winship 2006-03-16 22:07:53 UTC
This is fixed in CODE10 already, and the reporter has a fixed package. I'm
holding off actually getting it into 10.0 because I want to do it together with
bug 78329, which is still NEEDINFO. So lowering the priority to get it off the
CODE10 blocker list.
Comment 22 Dan Winship 2006-05-12 20:15:43 UTC
bug 78329 still hasn't gotten fixed and now SUSE 10.1 is out so there's not much point trying to get this into 10.0.