Random gnome freeze when attempting to logout/restart computer

[ManuPeng]

Hardy Heron development branch for amd64. Daily build from March, the 20th, with all available updates.
This is a random issue, I'd say it happens 80% of the time.

Expected:
Upon selecting System->Quit... or clicking on the session applet right of the date-time applet, a dialog should be displayed offering a list of options "Restart", "Shutdown", etc...

Steps:
1) Select System->Quit... or click on the session applet right of the date-time applet

Result:
Gnome freezes completely, the mouse cursor can still be moved around but it's completely detached from Gnome, clicking on icons, panels, menu does nothing, only restarting X with Ctrl+Alt+Delete works. And even then, after logging in Gnome again, it will freeze anew when attempting to logout.
It does work sometimes though, but it's rare. I've never had this problem on Gutsy. Other applets like date-time, volume control and shortcuts work just fine, only the "Quit" menu entry and the "Session" applet do this.

[ManuPeng (mvieuxmaire)]

Just tried it with compiz and the visual effects disabled and it still crashes, so it's not related (I suspected the dimming effect when you logout and the buggy nvidia driver might have something to do with it).

[ManuPeng (mvieuxmaire)]

Just an update, I still have that very error almost three weeks after the initial post. I barely can remember when I was able to logout of GNOME normally for the last time. I mean, without having to restart X with Ctrl+Alt+Delete first.

Am I alone with that bug, or what?

[Tom Verdaat (tom-verdaat)]

I had a resembling issue before on Gutsy. Strange thing was that I was the only one of the four users on the computer that had this issue. When upgrading to Hardy I backed up my home dir, emptied it and only put back the config files I really needed.

Have you tried adding a new user and logging in and out with that "empty" account?

[ManuPeng (mvieuxmaire)]

Thanks for your answer Tom,

It was originally my plan to only work with the development version of Hardy until the final release, and then to do a clean install. Unfortunately, it turns out the kernel on the final release is buggy and won't boot on my computer. Something about a pointer reference, the issue was known but didn't make it into the kernel on time.

Long story short, I guess I'll have to live with the freeze until the next release somewhere around October, or just not shut down my computer until then...

Manu

[ManuPeng (mvieuxmaire)]

Meantime, I can't remember what it feels like to leave a session the usual way. It's become a reflex to just restart X when I'm ready to shut down my computer, so I can pick the shutdown option at the login screen of GNOME.
And so it shocked me to discover that I can actually always exit X the regular way after updating the system with the update-manager. It doesn't seem to matter what gets updated, it could even be PGP, after an update, the "restart", "log off", "shutdown", "hibernate" window will be displayed upon selecting System->Quit...
I've lost all hopes to see this fixed in Hardy... ever... but let's just not allow that information to get lost. My suffering won't be in vain :-)

[ManuPeng (mvieuxmaire)]

Ok, I have news concerning this thing. Today, for the first time, I had a minute to spare after clicking on System->Quit in GNOME.
Turns out, after 50s the dialog actually ends up appearing, but the "Suspend" and "Hibernate" buttons are missing. Cancelling and clicking System->Quit again will display this dialog instantaneously, with "Suspend" and "Hibernate" even.

If I create a test user from scratch, as Tom Verdaat suggested, the new account won't have the 50s delay. My question to you all is now how do I debug this thing and find out what takes 50s? You see GNOME is completely frozen during that time, I can't click on anything, it's either killing X with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace or waiting 50s. Where are the configuration settings of the Quit program?