Bluetooth applet causes gnome panel to repeatedly crash

[James Lochhead]

Binary package hint: bluez-gnome

-- Description of the problem

I accidentally removed my notification area from the gnome panel instead of removing gnome do. Thinking I would just add it back on when I had finished what I was doing I restarted X. When I was fully logged back in the gnome panel was repeatedly restarting; like the kind of restart you get when issue sudo killall gnome-panel in the terminal.

-- Detailed description how I attempted to fix the problem

Since the gnome-panel was constantly restarting every half a second or so I did not have enough time to re-add the notification area. Next I tried to get into sessions so I could uncheck the bluetooth applet, that didn't work either. After that I tried to get into the terminal through alt + f2 - that didn't work, however I did manage to make an icon that launches it. However, because of the constant re-starting I couldn't enter my password to kill processes.

Eventually I managed to add an icon for the system monitor and launch it. From there I gradually killed off all processes to do with the gnome panel. After I killed the bluetooth applet the problem stopped; I am 99% sure that bluetooth was the applet causing the problem.

It would be quite easy for a new user to repeat this bug. I had trouble fixing it and I would describe myself as an intermediate level user. A new user might find this seriously off-putting.

Summary: This is a major problem.

-- After I managed to kill bluetooth

I re-added the notification area and restarted X. Everything worked fine from there.

-- In previous releases

In previous releases I noticed that if I removed the notification area a small window popped up for all the applets when I restarted (containing the icon). When I tried to close the window it always popped up again. Could this problem be caused by this behaviour now be handled in a different way by other packages?

-- Information on my system (Ubuntu guidelines)

1) I am using amd64 9.04 Jaunty Testing. It was basically a clean install, other than some sound fixes in alsa, Ubuntu restricted extras and gnome do I have not put anything else on.

I don't think this is relevant but I am using the new ext4 filesystem installed in an encrypted lvm using the alternate CD.

2) Version: 1.8-0

3) I expected it to not to cause gnome panel to crash repeatedly when I restarted X.

4) The gnome panel repeatedly crashed repeatedly, almost completely disabling me from using the UI until I managed to kill the bluetooth applet process.

Sorry about the huge bug report but I am not known to be brief. ^^

[P1LL4G3 (chapman)]

I don't think this issue lies with bluetooth. I'm having the same problem right now, however, no bluetooth devices are connected. I, also, accidentally closed the notification area and had much the same problem. I will attempt to follow your solution to the problem *gah posting from Windows*. In fact, its a relatively fresh install of Ubuntu, so I'm guessing this is simply caused by closing the notification area and restarting. Seems weird.

Notes:
AMDx86-64
Ubuntu 9.10
Linux Kernel 2.6.32

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, your crash report is either missing or challenging to deal with as a ".crash" file. Please follow these instructions to have apport report a new bug about your crash that can be dealt with by the automatic retracer.

If you are running the Ubuntu Stable Release you might need to enable apport in /etc/default/apport and restart.

If you are using Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop environment - launch nautilus and navigate to your /var/crash directory and double click on the crash report you wish to submit.
If you are using Kubuntu or Xubuntu you can file the crash using /usr/share/apport/apport-qt --crash-file=/var/crash/_my_crash_report.crash in a terminal - where _my_crash_report.crash is the crash you would like to report.

I'm closing this bug report since the process outlined above will automatically open a new bug report which can then dealt with more efficiently. Thanks in advance for your cooperation and understanding.