GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 64127
panel icons are lost - no panel running
Last modified: 2004-12-22 21:47:04 UTC
At first I thought it had to do with my notebook: fresh install of RedHat 7.2 from CDROM. After reboot, with a chance of 30-50%, some icons are lost. I put them back; after another reboot or two: same result. At times the panel is not running. Strange however: *always* the same applets: drive mount, GKB keyboard switcher, screen-shooter, pager, battery applet and a few more go missing; if, then 100% reproduceable the same! Now, however, I experienced something similar on my Desktop PC as well, which runs independantly: the _same_ icons go missing, panel does not run. For both machines diagnosis so far: when .gnome .gconf and .gconfd are saved to another directory _after_ closing Xwindows, those can be used (copied back to ~) in case of a session messing up the panel. Which seems to indicate that shutting off a Gnome-session does not mess up the setting, but (at times) starting one. I can even provoke the dying of the panel on my desktop (166MX/80MB-RAM) during Gnome-start: When clicking on Fortune's (I set the Fortunes instead of StartUp-hint) "Next" or "Close" at the _right_ moment, the panel process dies. Since the machine is very slow (166MX/80MB-RAM!), there seems to be a longer "window" when the panel process is vulnerable to die due to lack of resources. Since both machines experience the same problem, I cannot believe that I am the only one affected. I don't run Ximian-Gnome. The problem started right after the fresh install of Enigma onto a freshly formatted harddisk on my notebook. For the desktop-machine however, I cannot give a clear indication of when it started (upgraded from 7.1 to Roswell to 7.2). At least on 7.1 and Roswell it was without problem.
Here some more details: Firstly, it is sufficient to save ~.gnome after a successful session and copy it back after a messy session to reconstruct panel and icons. Secondly, here are the messages after setting the display options: "GtK-CRITICAL **: file gtkmain.c: line 582 (gtk_main_quit): assertion 'main loops !=NULL' failed. The GNOME panel is not running. [6 times repeated] GLib-CRITICAL **: file gmain.c: line 500 (g_source_remove): assertion 'tag > 0' failed." Then X can only be closed with Ctrl-Alt-Del
More results: reduced the RAM on the P166 to 32MB, no other changes. Now it warns that no Windows Manager is running and I should install one. Obviously you can starve it to death. But is P166 and 32 MB *sooo* little? Even worse: it must not show unpredictable behaviour dependant on the amount of resources or it will never be really stable. If resources are insufficient or timeouts expire, Gnome ought to handle the situation more suitably. Better fall back to the terminal with a clear indication than limping ahead without even a chance to close it normally (no panel no close).
Adding relevant keywords. You can filter on the phrase 'luis doing GNOME2 work' to catch all instances of this so that you can ignore them.
Please try the latest (1.4.x) version of gnome-core and gnome-libs from http://download.gnome.org/ Contact me if you need RPMS. *** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 69333 ***