Bug 710353

Summary:	gnome-shell is unnecessary evil when it cannot recover properly
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Peter Hjalmarsson <kanelxake>
Component:	gnome-session	Assignee:	Ray Strode [halfline] <rstrode>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	17	CC:	djasa, elad, jmccann, maxamillion, otaylor, rstrode, samkraju, vhumpa, walters
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2013-08-01 10:04:51 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:

Description Peter Hjalmarsson 2011-06-03 07:00:45 UTC

Description of problem:
Today I had a problem with gnome-shell that I have reported in another bug. Someone mentioned there that you can workaround it for the time being by pressing Alt+F2 and write "restart".
It worked fine the first time, however the second time I tried it gnome-shell was not able to recover. And here comes the evilness:

When gnome-shell cannot recover it turns the whole screen black, shows a sad computer and tells you to logout. No more no less.
I still had programs running in the background, I could see them by Alt+Tab, however since this error-message from gnome-shell is on top, it steals focus and hides those programs so I cannot reach them.
I had stuff in those programs I wanted to save, dammit!

So here is my proposal:
Implement some kind of list showing the current running applications and let you switch to them to save+close.

Because what I was doing was not so important so I can reconstruct it with ease, but there are people trying to use gnome-shell in production, where you want to be able to save first.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
gnome-shell-3.0.2-1.fc15.x86_64
mutter-3.0.2.1-1.fc15.x86_64


How reproducible:
Everytime gnome-shell crashes so hard it cannot recover.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. do something that may need to be saved
2. crash gnome-shell so hard it cannot recover
3.
  
Actual results:
gnome-shell does not let you save what you were doing.

Expected results:
gnome-shell should let you save what you were doing

Additional info:

Now I know we are supposed to harden gnome-shell until it cannot crash unrecoverable, but for those cases it does it is just unnecessary evil to not let people at least try to save their work.

Comment 1 Elad Alfassa 2011-06-03 18:21:30 UTC

You can use alt+f4 to close this sad computer dialog.




-- 
Fedora Bugzappers volunteer triage team
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers

Comment 2 Vitezslav Humpa 2012-02-27 14:54:43 UTC

I confirm this "bug". Still behaves the same with F17 alpha, alt-F4 kills the window. This is not very end-user solution, a second button in addition to the "Log Out" stating e.g. "Close" would be very welcome for these situations (when nothing has really gone wrong or gnome-shell is running fine).

Comment 3 Fedora End Of Life 2013-07-04 03:04:01 UTC

This message is a reminder that Fedora 17 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 17. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
this bug will be closed as WONTFIX if it remains open with a Fedora 
'version' of '17'.

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to a later Fedora version prior to Fedora 17's end of life.

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Comment 4 Fedora End Of Life 2013-08-01 10:04:57 UTC

Fedora 17 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2013-07-30. Fedora 17 is 
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further 
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of 
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.