Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 86136
Cannot start new programs
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:52:00 EDT
Description of problem: Occasionally, I am not able to start any NEW program using GNOME MENU. I tried starting terminal, nothing happened. I tried TEXT EDITOR, nothing happened. No error reported either. Meanwhile, existing running TERMINAL window will continue to function properly, but I can't start new ones. To get out of this condition, I LOGGED OUT, and LOG back in. And then it is back to normal, until the next time. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): Red Hat 8.0 How reproducible: Not reproducible. Problems happen intermittently several times a day Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. Actual results: Expected results: Additional info:
Probably your hostname changes (try typing "hostname") which breaks ~/.Xauthority and ~/.ICEauthority so if you try to start apps you can't authenticate to the X server. Try running say xterm in an already-open terminal, if it says can't authenticate this is the problem. The solution is a better auth mechanism for the X server (one that isn't hostname sensitive). Perhaps an interesting feature for future releases. You can workaround it in a totally insecure way by running "xhost +" (allows anyone to connect to your X server), this may be safe on single user systems with a strong firewall. Or you could configure your networking so the hostname doesn't change.
We discussed this before I believe, and I investigated the sources. Whatever changes the hostname is responsible for informing the X server the hostname has changed and telling the X server to allow connections from the new hostname. No changes to XFree86 are required.
GNOME isn't changing the hostname, and it is a design flaw in the .Xauthority stuff that changing the hostname breaks things. It should not be rocket science to do a better auth scheme if we want to get it on the feature list. I think we should use this bug as a placeholder for the X authentication enhancement. If you want to move it to whatever-changes-the-hostname (dhcp?) instead, that's fine with me. It's in no way gnome-specific or gnome-related though. The root problem is X's auth setup, and the hackaround would be in the hostname-changing program, neither of those are GNOME.
Thank you for the input. In my case, I did change the hostname, though the problem did not seem to happen immediately after that, but randomly later. I have reconfigured my Network with the new hostname permanently, and so I shall see if the problem goes away. THnks.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 80358 ***