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Bug 148305 - no desktop at all if ~/.metacity folder corrupted/missing while ~/.gnome2/sessions references it
no desktop at all if ~/.metacity folder corrupted/missing while ~/.gnome2/ses...
Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 407981
Product: metacity
Classification: Other
Component: general
2.8.x
Other Linux
: Normal critical
: ---
Assigned To: Metacity maintainers list
Metacity maintainers list
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2004-07-24 02:47 UTC by Filip G
Modified: 2007-04-09 21:05 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: 2.5/2.6


Description Filip G 2004-07-24 02:47:14 UTC 
quit X
mv ~/.metacity ~/.metacity.old
startx
CONTROL-ALT-BACKSPACE (desktop fails to load)

workaround:
quit X
mv ~/.gnome2/sessions ~/.gnome2/sessions.old
startx
Comment 1 Havoc Pennington 2004-07-24 03:06:49 UTC 
Should probably not exit if the session file on the command line is missing. I'd
still like a fatal error if the session file is present but broken, since we
need that to catch bugs, and it should not ever happen (except due to bugs)
Comment 2 Scott Bronson 2004-09-21 17:18:09 UTC 
Corrupded files should not cause Metacity to fail to start, should they?  A few
years ago, I lost a sector out from under a gnome-session file (a few hundred
bytes of random garbage appeared right in the middle of it).  Took me forever to
figure out why I suddenly couldn't log in.

Would it be hard to move the bad file out of the way, then put up a startup
error?  Something like, "The file ~/.metacity/session.state was corrupted.  A
new one was generated.  Find the old one in ~/.metacity/session.state.bad"?
Comment 3 Thomas Thurman 2006-08-19 00:18:54 UTC 
I can't reproduce this with HEAD. If a session file contains garbage, it causes the error

  Window manager warning: Failed to parse saved session file: Error on line 1 char 1: Document must begin with an element (e.g. <book>)

but metacity loads anyway, as if the file hadn't been specified on the command line.

Reporter: Can you still reproduce this error, or should I close this WORKSFORME?
Comment 4 Elijah Newren 2007-04-09 21:05:18 UTC 
I believe this is the same as bug 407981, which has been recently fixed.  Since there was no answer to Thomas' last question, though, I'll just go ahead and mark it as a duplicate instead of asking for confirmation.  :)

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 407981 ***