GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 124707
GNOME settings daemon fails to start; all panel activities fail
Last modified: 2013-01-02 13:37:02 UTC
Distribution: Fedora Core release 0.95 (Severn) Package: gnome-panel Severity: major Version: GNOME2.4.0 unspecified Gnome-Distributor: GNOME.Org Synopsis: GNOME settings daemon fails to start; all panel activities fail Bugzilla-Product: gnome-panel Bugzilla-Component: Panel Bugzilla-Version: unspecified BugBuddy-GnomeVersion: 2.0 (2.4.0.1) Description: Description of the crash: Upon logging into GNOME, the following error message is presented: There was an error starting the GNOME Settings Daemon. Some things, such as themes, sounds, or background settings may not work correctly. The Settings Daemon restarted too many times. The last error message was: Child process did not give an error message, unknown failure occurred GNOME will still try to restart the Settings Daemon next time you log in. I'm not entirely sure if that error is related to this error, but I included it just in case. The major problem is that now all panel-related activities fail: launchers fail with the following error message: Application "gnome-panel" (process 15821) has crashed due to a fatal error. (Segmentation fault) Attempting to start applets fail with a varation of: The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:GNOME_WorkspaceSwitcherApplet" Details: Child process did not give an error message, unknown failure occurred or The panel encountered a problem while loading "OAFIID:GNOME_StickyNotesApplet" Details: Child process did not give an error message, unknown failure occurred However, the clock applet works, and adding or removing a launcher from the menu works (but as above, launching them doesn't). Steps to reproduce the crash: 1. see above 2. 3. Expected Results: above actions should not fail How often does this happen? consistently -- every time. Additional Information: [bcs@zephyr bcs]$ uname -a Linux zephyr 2.4.22-1.2088.nptl #1 Thu Oct 9 20:21:24 EDT 2003 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux [bcs@zephyr bcs]$ rpm -q fedora-release fedora-release-0.95-1 [bcs@zephyr bcs]$ rpm -qa | grep -i gnome | sort gdk-pixbuf-gnome-0.22.0-3.0 gnome-applets-2.4.1-1 gnome-audio-1.4.0-6 gnome-desktop-2.4.0-1 gnome-desktop-devel-2.4.0-1 gnome-games-2.4.0-2 gnome-icon-theme-1.0.9-2 gnome-libs-1.4.1.2.90-34 gnome-libs-devel-1.4.1.2.90-34 gnome-mag-0.10.3-1 gnome-media-2.4.0-1 gnome-mime-data-2.4.0-1 gnome-panel-2.4.0-3 gnome-pilot-2.0.10-3 gnome-pilot-devel-2.0.10-3 gnome-print-0.37-7.1 gnome-print-devel-0.37-7.1 gnome-python2-2.0.0-2 gnome-python2-bonobo-2.0.0-2 gnome-python2-canvas-2.0.0-2 gnome-python2-gtkhtml2-2.0.0-2 gnome-session-2.4.0-1 gnome-spell-1.0.5-2 gnome-system-monitor-2.4.0-1 gnome-terminal-2.4.0.1-1 gnome-themes-2.4.0-1 gnome-user-docs-2.0.1-3 gnome-utils-2.4.0-1 gnome-vfs-1.0.5-15 gnome-vfs2-2.4.0-1 gnome-vfs2-devel-2.4.0-1 gnome-vfs2-extras-0.99.10-3.1 gnome-vfs-devel-1.0.5-15 gnome-vfs-extras-0.2.0-7 libgnome-2.4.0-1 libgnomecanvas-2.4.0-1 libgnomecanvas-devel-2.4.0-1 libgnome-devel-2.4.0-1 libgnomeprint-1.116.0-7 libgnomeprint15-0.37-7.1 libgnomeprint22-2.3.1-2 libgnomeprintui-1.116.0-5 libgnomeprintui22-2.3.1-2 libgnomeui-2.4.0.1-1 libgnomeui-devel-2.4.0.1-1 openssh-askpass-gnome-3.6.1p2-19 switchdesk-gnome-3.9.8-18 up2date-gnome-4.1.7-1 Debugging Information: Backtrace was generated from '/usr/bin/gnome-panel' (no debugging symbols found)...Using host libthread_db library "/lib/tls/libthread_db.so.1". (no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled] [New Thread -1085026176 (LWP 15734)] (no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... 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(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... 0x00729c32 in _dl_sysinfo_int80 () from /lib/ld-linux.so.2
+ Trace 40894
Thread 1 (Thread -1085026176 (LWP 15734))
------- Bug moved to this database by unknown@bugzilla.gnome.org 2003-10-15 15:17 ------- Reassigning to the default owner of the component, gnome-panel-maint@bugzilla.gnome.org.
Duplicate from Mdk bug http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=6138 It seems to be either a bug in bonobo-activation-server or evolution : If you log in (using GDM), start evolution, exit it, evolution-wombat is left running in memory (because Evo 1.4.x doesn't have a way to know it is no longer needed, this should be fixed in Evo 2.0.x). Then logout, login again and b-a-s won't response to any request.. This is with either ORBit2 2.8.1 or 2.8.2 and Evolution 1.4.5
This is consistent with the behavior I'm seeing -- after logging out, the problem returns every time until I reboot. Next time it happens (i.e., next time I log out), I'll kill evolution-wombat and b-a-s manually and see what happens.
Ok, I finally found what is exactly the problem : when using gdm with root_squashed NFS home (or when gdm decides to use a fallback directory), GDM set XAUTHORITY to a temporary file in /tmp. So, for initial login, you'll get XAUTHORITY=/tmp/gdm123456 in bonobo-activation-server environment.. If you run evolution in that session, evolution-wombat will stay in memory even after logout (due to shortcoming in Evo 1.4.x which will be fixed in Evo 2.0.x), so bonobo-activation-server stays in memory. When you login again with GDM, XAUTHORITY is re-set with a new value (let's say /tmp/gdm789123) but when gnome-session tries to start gnome-settings-daemon through b-a-s, it fails because b-a-s still have the old XAUTHORITY value and g-s-d is not authorized to connect to X server. Workaround for this is to set in gdm.conf (you need gdm >= 2.4.4.4) NeverPlaceCookiesOnNFS=false to force it to always use $HOME for .XAuthority. I'm not sure which component is really buggy here :((
Hm... gdm appears to already be using $HOME for the .Xauthority file in my setup... ?
b-a-s cannot assume that the authorization will be the same on the next session, that's SEVERELY broken. Also how will this work if you login from a different X server. I could log in from a different display as on one of the flexiservers or perhaps using different XDMCP displays. Then $DISPLAY will be different and $XAUTHORITY will also be different. Or of I use ssh to log on.
Well, I logged out and sure enough it happened again. Killing evolution-wombat and bonobo-activation-server manually fixed it, as expected. So, in essence this is an Evolution bug?
In case it ends up being helpful at all: http://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=106826
There is an evolution bug here (evolution-wombat is not exiting), but bonobo-activation-server shouldn't fail because of someone else's bugs. So I'd say the bug you initially reported is bonobo's fault.
Does this patch to libbonobo help: diff -u -p -u -r1.41 bonobo-activation-activate.c --- bonobo-activation/bonobo-activation-activate.c 9 Jun 2003 13:17:55 -0000 1.41 +++ bonobo-activation/bonobo-activation-activate.c 29 Oct 2003 13:23:01 -0000 @@ -714,6 +714,7 @@ bonobo_activation_init_activation_env (v { "SESSION_MANAGER", NULL }, /* XSMP session manager */ { "AUDIODEV", NULL }, /* Audio device on Sun systems */ { "LANG", NULL }, /* Fallback locale name */ + { "XAUTHORITY", NULL }, { NULL, NULL } }; ?
Confirmed, this patch fixes the problem...
Fix committed, doing a 2.4.2 release. Thanks guys.