Bug 78593

Summary:	Gnome will not load
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Brian Schmidt <bts>
Component:	gnome-core	Assignee:	Havoc Pennington <hp>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	Jay Turner <jturner>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	medium
Version:	8.0	CC:	srevivo
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	athlon
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2002-11-26 13:38:08 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Brian Schmidt 2002-11-26 03:00:24 UTC

From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.2b) Gecko/20021018

Description of problem:
Gnome locks up (sort of) during use (10 min, 1 hr, ??).  I'm not sure if this is
more Gnome than Nautilus, or more Nautilus than Gnome.  When I'm in Gnome, and
if I have my 'Home' window open, or the 'Start Here' open - or sometimes even
just trying to open them - will seem to lock something up.  None of the
Nautilus-related windows will respond.  If I have anything else open, like a
terminal window, Mozilla, anything at all, those are fine.  If I pick up one of
those other windows and drag it around, it "erases" my desktop.  Sometimes I can
choose "Log Out" from the menu; sometimes I have to Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.  Once
that has happened, I cannot get back into Gnome.  I 'startx' and it looks like
it wants to.  The furthest I get is where the Red Hat splash window pops up,
surrounded by blackness.  This is normally where the background would flicker on
and the icons would light up as they load.  I never get to that point.  It just
won't load.  I've restarted the computer, but that doesn't work.  I killed all
of the .gnome2* dirs and that seemed to work at first.  It got me back running.
 Until it crashed again.  Now, even deleting those, I cannot get back in.  I can
switchdesk to KDE and load that up just fine.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Wait for it to lock up?  ;)
2. I can't seem to find a pattern to when it occurs just yet.

Actual Results:  Things die.

Expected Results:  Things shouldn't die.

Additional info:

I don't notice any errors on the console when I try to 'startx'.  It gets to the
point where it says something to the effect of 'Loaded xxx Background' and then
it just stops.  Nothing else happens after that point.

Comment 1 Brian Schmidt 2002-11-26 03:09:41 UTC

Here is the console (Ctrl-Alt-F1) info from trying to start up a session.  It
just stops here.


[bts@clown bts]$ startx

XFree86 Version 4.2.0 (Red Hat Linux release: 4.2.0-72) / X Window System
(protocol Version 11, revision 0, vendor release 6600)
Release Date: 23 January 2002
        If the server is older than 6-12 months, or if your card is
        newer than the above date, look for a newer version before
        reporting problems.  (See http://www.XFree86.Org/)
Build Operating System: Linux 2.4.18-11smp i686 [ELF]
Build Host: daffy.perf.redhat.com

Module Loader present
OS Kernel: Linux version 2.4.18-18.8.0
(bhcompile.redhat.com) (gcc version 3.2 20020903 (Red Hat
Linux 8.0 3.2-7)) #1 Wed Nov 13 22:52:09 EST 2002
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
         (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
         (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/XFree86.0.log", Time: Thu Nov 21 18:03:24 2002
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/XF86Config"
SESSION_MANAGER=local/clown.home.lan:/tmp/.ICE-unix/1018
Loaded background '0x8095c88

Comment 2 Michael Lee Yohe 2002-11-26 13:38:02 UTC

Okay - attempt to reproduce the scenario (since I cannot duplicate the behavior
on a couple machines that I've tried).  Since you obviously have some semblance
of system control when this happens - CTRL+ALT+[1-6] (go to a virtual terminal).
 Enter "top" at a prompt and see if some process is hovering at the top of the list.

It sounds as if something is hanging to the point where when you force-kill X,
some Gnome configuration (be it GConf or something) is getting corrupted
preventing you from properly dumping the current state to disk.  Finding the
culprit app would be helpful.

Comment 3 Brian Schmidt 2002-12-07 15:07:30 UTC

I'm closing this out because for the life of me, after it was recurring on a
steady pace, now that I filed the bug it won't happen again.  And this machine
is about to be overhauled with a new motherboard and processor, so it's going to
be cleaned out.