Race to start gnome-settings-daemon in upstart user session

[Jason Conti]

It appears if enabling the upstart user session ( https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RaringRingtail/ReleaseNotes#Upstart_User_Sessions_.28technology_preview.29 ) there is a race between gnome-session and upstart for who starts gnome-settings-daemon first.

Most of the time on my system, it seems like upstart wins. I'm guessing in that case, gnome-session tries to start it, fails and gives up, which is fine.

When gnome-session wins however, upstart continues to respawn gnome-settings-daemon indefinitely, usually causing the wrong icon theme to load, and causing flickering on the desktop (most noticeable in a conky window, but affecting other windows as well).

Since it is a race, it is difficult to reproduce, but it can be forced by:
1) enable upstart user sessions
2) mkdir -p ~/.config/upstart/
3) echo manual > ~/.config/upstart/gnome-settings-daemon.override
4) Log into the ubuntu session
5) initctl start gnome-settings-daemon;

Running: initctl stop gnome-settings-daemon; will stop the endless respawn of gnome-settings-daemon when finished testing.

My current workaround is to disable /etc/xdg/gnome-settings-daemon.desktop from starting, and let upstart take it.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.04
Package: gnome-settings-daemon 3.6.4-0ubuntu8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.8.0-21.32-generic 3.8.8
Uname: Linux 3.8.0-21-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.9.2-0ubuntu8
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri May 17 12:34:23 2013
InstallationDate: Installed on 2011-10-11 (583 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111011)
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: gnome-settings-daemon
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to raring on 2013-04-24 (22 days ago)

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Sounds like a gnome-session bug as we're overriding the gnome-settings-daemon desktop file in the XDG path to prevent just that:

stgraber@castiana:~/Desktop/menu$ env | grep XDG | grep upstart
XDG_CONFIG_DIRS=/etc/xdg/xdg-ubuntu:/usr/share/upstart/xdg:/etc/xdg

stgraber@castiana:~/Desktop/menu$ cat /usr/share/upstart/xdg/autostart/gnome-settings-daemon.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=GNOME Settings Daemon
Exec=/usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon
Hidden=true
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-settings-daemon

[Jason Conti (jconti)]

Ah, in that case this may just be a bug with my setup. $HOME/.config/autostart/ is likely read before any of those directories, and I have a copy of gnome-settings-daemon.desktop in there. Thanks for the information. I'll delete it and continue testing, but this bug is probably invalid.

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Hi,

Indeed a local copy in .config/autostart would be higher priority than our override in /usr/share/upstart/xdg and would explain what you saw.

Closing the bug report.