gnome confused when date not set correctly

[Mark Van den Borre]

my machine: iBook G4 2005/03; (probably) empty clock battery or PRAM corruption(?)-> without ntp sync, date set to 1904/01/01
my ubuntu version: Dapper, up to date as of 2006/04/09

On this machine with a wrong date set, Gnome gets utterly confused:
* It asks if it should remove all kinds of applets
* It complains about various other things.
* Font and other settings seem to be broken

Gnome should probably:
* warn the user that he probably has a wrong date set.
* look if it's one of the suspicious default clock setting dates (1980/01/01 on most x86 machines, 1904/01/01 on most ppc Macs) and give appropriate suggestions (clock battery empty?,...)

[LittleBuddha (arnkell2)]

I have a Wallstreet G3 Powerbook with a dead PRAM and my symptomps are the same as described in this bug.

Could this not be fixed by setting some kind of date redefinition in the init file for GDM that runs at startup. Something like, if date< 1970 then set date to something after 1970.

Thereby us that have old laptops could still use them, without buying a new PRAM, that costs a bundle.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

i spotted this in the gnome-session 2.19.2-0ubunut1 change log

 "Warn the user if the clock is totally wrong and let him launch a
 config tool"

[Dev (devesh-menon)]

I have loaded ubuntu fiesty on my mac ppc and every morning when i start the comp, the date gets reset to 1904/01/01 and nautilus crashes too asking if the applets are to be deleted. It doesn't work until I type in "killall bonobo-activation server" and restart nautilus using Alt-F2. Any solutions for this? are the two related? i can attach a screenshot of my desktop at startup incase any1's interested.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on the latest release, Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal". When you test it and if it is still an issue, please remark this bug as New.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for meta-gnome2 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]