GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 121782
applet dies at logout
Last modified: 2010-01-24 01:06:25 UTC
I have the sticky notes applet on my panel, and have a note on the screen. I close all my applications except this sticky note, and then log out. After confirming logout, a window telling that this panel has died unexpectedly and asks whether I want the panel to reload it appears for a very short time. (This is the same window as I get if I kill the stickynotes_applet process.) Since metacity has already exited by this time, this window appears at the top-left corner of the screen and is unmanaged. The window appears for a really short time: rarely it doesn't appear at all, sometimes only the gray background color appears (and then X exits), but in most of the cases the text appears for about a tenth of second before X exits. This time is only sufficient to read one or two words of the text where I've previously focused my eyes, but it clearly mentions the Sticky Notes applet (I had to logout 10--20 times to be able to read it :-)). This visually annoying bug doesn't cause any misbehaviour of the applet and only seems to occur if I have at least one note on my desktop. As it seems to be a bug of time conditions and races, it might be important: I have Celeron 375MHz 384MB ram, Matrox G400 card, XFree 4.3.
Sorry, there's a typo... After confirming logout, a window telling that this _applet_ has died appears...
Hrm, I don't see this anymore. Are you still seeing it in 2.5, Egmont? It's fairly embarassing if you do see it. [I'm seeing something else at logout, also embarassing, but that's a different bug ;)
Gnome stickynotes_applet 2.6.1 Egmont: Do u still see this bug?. I'm not able to reproduce this bug. It working fine. Infact after starting the xwindows again restores the sticky note applet exactly in the same form i left it during logout. So shall this bug be closed.
I still use 2.4.2 but plan to switch to 2.6 soon. I'll come back and tell what I see there.
I don't see this bug in 2.6
I think this is fixed, can't reproduce either. Egmont if it's still around after your upgrade, please reopen the bug I'm closing for now Thanks for reporting back!
Sorry for being so slow, but I reopen it now, as the bug still occurs in 2.8.0. Seems it's also related to #153269.
Confirmed that it still occurs on 2.8.0 (GARNOME 2.8.0). I come from bug #153269 where I originally posted my comments. I was not so lucky to be able to see words from the dialog that pops up but symptoms are exactly the same. Problem seems to occur when applet crashes before exiting (as Egmont says). Effect is that notes' positions are not correctly remembered hence appearing all on top of each other at startup (in upper left corner). Note that I do not think it is related to the notes config file (.gnome2/stickynotes_applet) because notes are incorrectly positioned _WHEREAS_ config file fields about position (x and y attributes) are properly set. Maybe this occurs while parsing the config file ?
Ok, we're going to need backtrace (prefereably good back trace with symbols and such). Without trying... here is the way I think you can get a backtrace while logging out. Start 'screen'. If you're not familiar with it, screen is like a session manager for terminals. Inside your new screen terminal, `killall stickynotes_applet` Then before reloading run `gdb stickynotes_applet` and type 'r' to start running the applet. Reload the applet. Log out. GDB should catch the exception... Go to a terminal (eg. vt 1) and type `screen -x` to reconnect your screen from a second location. Ideally now you should be able to get a backtrace via 'bt'. Of course, I haven't tried this, so your milage may vary.
I tried this, this is what gdb said: Program exited normally. (gdb) bt No stack. I didn't see the popup window though. And at the next login the applet was placed again at a wrong position (as mentioned bug #153269.) Sorry for the lame question, Davyd, but as you ask backtrace from others: does sticky_notes work correctly for you (even regarding that other bug report)?
Egmont, to be perfectly honest due to time contraints I haven't had time to look at this bug. I was kind of hoping that we would get a good backtrace and could nail the bug without a lot of work on my part ;) I'll try to have a look at it later on.
*** Bug 153269 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Upping the priority to ensure this is fixed for GNOME 2.10
Uhm... I think we may be talking about an older, more general bug here. I have now a Gentoo Linux with GNOME 2.8, and I'm seeing the "Sticky Notes Applet does not remember notes position" of bug #153269, so I have removed the applet from my GNOME Panel, because the notes were getting in my way when their position was wrong. I'm getting the grey box + warning now too, even with the sticky notes applet removed. But the actual thing is that I've been experiencing the "something broke at logout" syndrome since the GNOME version supplied with Mandrake 9.2 at least (GNOME 2.4). I consistently get the grey rectangle at the top left corner of the screen at logout and the "system-logout" sound is interrupted, and substituted for the "system-warning" one. Unfortunately I've not been able to read any of the messages even when putting some background load on my CPU in any case, so I don't know what's getting broken. I would bet on something going crazy either in gnome-session or gnome-panel. I don't know anything at all about how the session is managed in GNOME, but... May it have something to do with the applets being notified for session end AFTER the GNOME Panel is notified and destroyed?
Tried to do the screen + gdb trick as sketched by Davyd... First time killall seemed to kill two instances of sticky_notes, so I restarted only one of them. Then I've tried, and the gdb output says that the application had exited normally. Anyway the notes keep being misplaced.
I'm seeing this as well (on Fedora Core 3 x86). It seems happen about one in every four logins, but as an interesting data point it doesn't seem to occur when I reload the applet after a kill or kill -9. I've gotten some backtraces (which I can attach if you want), but I doubt they're going to help. They report a SIGPIPE, but every one gets its backtrace cut off with a corrupt stack frame. Basically they goes: pthreads -> various X things -> gdk -> two unidentified frames at high addresses -> gobject -> corrupt stack frame. If you think they'll help I can attach the backtraces, but they're not getting as far up as the applet.
Hmm, I remember seeing the grey rectangle in the upper left area on the screen when running a gnome-session under valgrind. This was without the stickynotes applet running at all so I don't think it's related to one specific applet or maybe not even an applet at all. It's barely noticable under a normal session and even when running under valgrind I can't see any content in the grey area...
*** Bug 158457 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
I saw this yesterday on a slow session; it was very clearly the notification area- so maybe it is happening to multiple applets? Federico, didn't we find/kill one of these for NLD9? Did that patch make it upstream?
I am seeing it for volume-control applet but I couldn't able to read the warning message.
I am observing the same behaviour with the multiload-applet-2
Isn't this a duplicate of bug #147691 ?
No, I don't think so.
Egmont: do you have any applet listed in ~/.gnome2/session?
No, I don't even have this file since I never save the current session at logout. /usr/share/gnome/default.session is the same as found in mainstream gnome-session (there are 4 clients: gnome-{smproxy,wm,panel} and nautilus). I can always easily reproduce the bug with brand new user accounts with empty home directory as well as with my old account.
not sure how relevent it would be here but in the 2.0 days we had the same problem with geyes applet crashing on logout. see bug #90547 . Mark fixed it then. Wonder if something similar has re-surfaced.
Just for the record, I'd like to mention that I'm seeing frequent crashes of the modemlights applet on logout (GNOME 2.8).
*** Bug 167101 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Another report, FC3 (thus I guess Gnome 2.8) and sticky notes. The notes don't remember their position. As far as I can see, this is due to the notes not exiting properly. However, I never see a window reporting the crash. I can remember that the notes used to work, but not at which GNOME version though. Sorry.
Without being able to duplicate reliably I'm taking this off the showstopper list. But god I hate this bug. :/
Is this still happening? Marking as NEEDINFO.
For me this bug seems to be gone with gnome 2.12.0.
Closing, someone please reopen if it appears again.