GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 419085
gdm-Xnest: New session kills xsession-errors also for current session
Last modified: 2010-06-04 20:11:56 UTC
Please describe the problem: If I log into another session than the one currently running - either via a nested window or on a separate display - when the session is done the file ~/.xsession-errors gets deleted. But that means the file isn't available for error-writing during the original session anymore either. Even if I recreate it myself ('touch .xsession-errors'), the file doesn't get written to anymore. The file ~/.xsession-errors gets created by the script /etc/X11/Xsession, but this works okay: if I use kdm instead of gdm, an additional session does not kill the file .xsession-errors at log out, so I must assume that gdm-Xnest is at fault here. Steps to reproduce: 1. see above Actual results: see above Expected results: Not remove .xsession-errors. IMHO it would be best to create an .xsession-errors-x for each logon via gdm, where 'x' is a higher number if another session is already running. Does this happen every time? yes Other information: Previously reported under Mandriva Cooker as http://qa.mandriva.com/show_bug.cgi?id=21735
It might be nice to create a certain number of .xsession-errors files and keep N of them around, or to keep them around a certain time (perhaps a day). Perhaps allowing the configuration file to specify how many to keep. I would accept a patch to improve the management of this log file. That said, I don't think this issue is very high priority. The purpose of the file is to help people debug problems that they might see when trying to login, if there is a failure. Typically users don't log in multiple times before they notice they are having a problem that they want to look at. Also typically such problems cause the user to be unable to login even once properly, so the file normally doesn't need to be kept around for long. Though there might be other reasons why having this log info may be useful, so if you can think of good reasons why it should be kept around then that would be handy.
Well I don't look at the log to find out the cause of the problem: I look at the log to see what problems there may be in my configuration and then try to solve them. So the log is pretty important to me. If I use a different login (for example to compare a problem somewhere), I would hope to still have the log after that. It may even be weeks before I logout. All that time I don't have an .xsession-errors available. So these are my reasons for thinking the file is rather important.
Why not store the session output in ~/.xsession-errors.0, ~/.xsession-errors.20, etc?
This seems reasonable. I'd accept a patch to make this change.
Note similar bug #459293 which should probably be fixed along with this bug.
Thanks for taking the time to report this bug. However, you are using a version that is too old and not supported anymore. GNOME developers are no longer working on that version, so unfortunately there will not be any bug fixes for the version that you use. By upgrading to a newer version of GNOME you could receive bug fixes and new functionality. You may need to upgrade your Linux distribution to obtain a newer version of GNOME. Please feel free to reopen this bug if the problem still occurs with a newer version of GNOME.