GNOME freeze on login - can unfreeze by killing dbus-daemon

[Andy Balaam]

Binary package hint: dbus

I upgraded from Gutsy to Hardy, and since the upgrade my GNOME login freezes forever.

After I type my username and password, the screen goes blank (with just a mouse cursor) and stays that way, even if I leave it for several hours.

If I press Ctrl-Alt-F1 and switch to a virtual console, and kill one of the processes called dbus-daemon, the login continues. When I am logged in, I get a message saying gnome-settings-daemon failed to start, and I am reverted to the default theme. Also, applications (such as F-Spot) that rely on dbus are unable to start.

The dbus-daemon process I need to kill is the one with the highest pid:

$ ps -u andy
  PID TTY TIME CMD
 6654 ? 00:00:00 gconfd-2
 6662 ? 00:00:00 x-session-manag
 6771 ? 00:00:00 seahorse-agent
 6776 ? 00:00:00 dbus-launch
 6777 ? 00:00:00 dbus-daemon
 6786 ? 00:00:00 dbus-daemon
 6787 ? 00:00:00 gnome-settings-
 6791 ? 00:00:13 pulseaudio
 6794 ? 00:00:00 gconf-helper
 6807 ? 00:00:00 gnome-screensav
10006 ? 00:00:00 sshd
10008 pts/0 00:00:00 bash
10210 pts/0 00:00:00 ps

$ ps -ef | grep dbus-daemon
103 5162 1 0 07:40 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --system
andy 6777 1 0 07:52 ? 00:00:00 /usr/bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 20 --print-address 23 --session
andy 6786 1 0 07:52 ? 00:00:00 dbus-daemon --fork --print-address 25 --print-pid 27 --session
andy 10214 10008 0 17:27 pts/0 00:00:00 grep dbus-daemon

$ kill 6786

After I type the "kill" command above, the login continues as I described.

I don't know how to get any relevant dbus logs, but I will attach some hopefully useful information. Please let me know if there are more things you need.

This machine has hardware RAID, so it is possible it is connected with bug #228855.

$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 8.04
Release: 8.04

$ uname -a
Linux ubuntu-raid 2.6.24-16-generic #1 SMP Thu Apr 10 13:23:42 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

$ sudo apt-cache search dbus | grep dbus
dbus - simple interprocess messaging system
dbus-1-doc - simple interprocess messaging system (documentation)
dbus-x11 - simple interprocess messaging system (X11 deps)
libdbus-1-3 - simple interprocess messaging system
libdbus-1-dev - simple interprocess messaging system (development headers)
libdbus-glib-1-2 - simple interprocess messaging system (GLib-based shared library)
libdbus-glib-1-dev - simple interprocess messaging system (GLib interface)
libdbus-glib-1-doc - simple interprocess messaging system (GLib-based shared library)
libdbus-qt-1-1c2 - simple interprocess messaging system (Qt-based shared library)
libdbus-qt-1-dev - simple interprocess messaging system (Qt interface)
libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil - CLI implementation of D-Bus (GLib mainloop integration)
libndesk-dbus1.0-cil - CLI implementation of D-Bus
libnet-dbus-perl - Perl extension for the DBus message system
libpolkit-dbus-dev - library for accessing PolicyKit via D-Bus - development files
libpolkit-dbus2 - library for accessing PolicyKit via D-Bus
libstrigiqtdbusclient-dev - development files for libstrigiqtdbusclient
libstrigiqtdbusclient0 - library for writing D-Bus clients for Strigi Desktop Search
python-dbus - simple interprocess messaging system (Python interface)
python-dbus-dbg - Debug build of the D-Bus Python interface
python-dbus-doc - Documentation for the D-Bus Python interface
python-qt4-dbus - DBus Support for PyQt4
python-qt4-dbus-dbg - DBus Support for PyQt4 (debug extensions)
apertium-dbus - A D-Bus service for the Apertium machine translation system
gstreamer-dbus-media-service - Media service for Ubuntu Mobile
kdbus - D-BUS service browser for KDE
libdbus-ruby - Ruby binding for D-Bus
libdbus-ruby1.8 - Ruby 1.8 binding for D-Bus
libqdbusbridge - Qt 4 D-Bus Accessibility Bridge

[Andy Balaam (mail-artificialworlds)]

Note in the dmesg output attached above, gnome-keyring-daemon appears to be segfaulting. Not sure whether this could be important?

[Andy Balaam (mail-artificialworlds)]

When I choose the Gutsy kernel that was left by the upgrade, I get the same result, suggesting this is not a kernel problem.

$ uname -a
Linux ubuntu-raid 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Feb 12 07:42:25 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Interestingly, the gnome-keyring-daemon segfault does not seem to happen with this kernel (2.6.22-14-generic).

[Andy Balaam (mail-artificialworlds)]

As described in bug #218434, I can work around this by running this comand:

hal-get-property --key block.storage_device --udi `hal-find-by-property --key volume.mount_point --string /` | xargs -l1 hal-set-property --key storage.removable --bool false --udi