Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 78593
Gnome will not load
Last modified: 2015-01-07 19:01:53 EST
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.
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@sylvester.devel.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
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.
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.