Created attachment 492488 [details] gnome-panel bug report Description of problem: After applying patch updates to my RHEL5 systems on 4/5/2011 I have had multiple instances of users reporting problems with gnome-panel crashing or not functioning properly when they log in. Evolution users have reported that Evolution crashes when they attempt to open a new message window. How reproducible: I have been unable to reproduce the problem since not all users who received a system update are experiencing this problem however all users who reported the problem were patched on 4/5/2011. Additional info: I attempted to "fix" the problem on one system by moving out the users ~/.??* file/directories, clearing out /tmp (including .* files) and rebooting. At first it looked like this fixed the problem but then the user took the system off the network, reconnected it at home and the problem reappeared. He reports that if he trys to log in before connecting the system to the network it seems that he can log in ok but then once he connects and tries to ssh out the panels will suddenly crash. The timing of this given the other actions may just be coincidental however I thought it was worth mentioning just in case it is helpful. =) I have uploaded a crash report from gnome-panel. This seems to be the same problem as was reported in Bug report 693882 so please link if appropriate.
Yes, this appears to be related to bug 693882 as well as bug 696431. Lots more details in those two reports. I've seen the same thing happen to gnome-panel on at least 5 Scientific Linux 5.5 systems after the glibc update on April 5. In bug 693882, two commenters suggested downgrading glibc to fix the problem. I suspect the root of the problem is a memory management/memory corruption bug that the new allocation restrictions in glibc brought to light. So a downgrade is just hiding the problem again, not really fixing it, unless the actual bug is in one of the glibc patches as one comment suggests. There were bug reports of gnome-panel freezing occasionally, posted a couple years ago (bug 476667 and bug 497603), which I had noticed a couple times as well. These could be related to the same memory corruption issue.
This bug/component is not included in scope for RHEL-5.11.0 which is the last RHEL5 minor release. This Bugzilla will soon be CLOSED as WONTFIX (at the end of RHEL5.11 development phase (Apr 22, 2014)). Please contact your account manager or support representative in case you need to escalate this bug.
Although this bug report wasn't updated to reflect the fix, I'm quite sure this bug was fixed by a glibc update (glibc-2.5-58.el5_6.3 in errata https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2011-0466.html). See bug 693882, especially the comments by Troy Dawson, for details on the fix. The glibc bug introduced by a faulty patch in glibc-2.5-58.el5_6.2 affected both gnome-panel and evolution, and possibly other applications too, but was fixed years ago - about 3 weeks after the bug was introduced/released.
Thanks, closing this one out as a duplicate of 693882. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 693882 ***
The needinfo request[s] on this closed bug have been removed as they have been unresolved for 1000 days