awn disappeared after update to gconf 2.28.0-1ubuntu3

[Vanishing]

no matter which way you launch awn, nothing shows up, running avant-window-navigator in terminal shows nothing.
which commands could give you guys more information?
Distribution: Lucid Lynx.
Method of installation: Install through awn testing ppa.
awn version:0.4
Video card: Ati, open source driver.
It is not a crash nor segfault, it runs, just nothing shows up.
dmesg gives nothing useful either..

Edit:nvm..turns out I was using the karmic awn testing ppa. Changed to Lucid ones, saw a bunch update.

Edit2: It still does not work. Same symptom.

[Vanishing (vanishing)]

nvm..turns out I was using the karmic awn testing ppa. Changed to Lucid ones, saw a bunch update.

[LegendarySandwich (legendarysandwich)]

Same with me. I'm still an Ubuntu newb. I like Avant, how could I keep it?

[Mark Lee (malept)]

I'd like to know if there are any non-Lucid users who experience this problem.

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

It seems that the last update of gconf has broken awn.

I run three Lucid installations where two of them are fully updated which then include the packages

gconf2-2.28.0-1u3
gconf2-common-2.28.0-1ubuntu3
gconf-defaults-service-2.28.0-1ubuntu3
libgconf2-4-2.38.0-1ubuntu3

The log .xsession-errors lists
(avant-window-navigator:2150): GConf-CRITICAL **: gconf_value_get_list: assertion `value != NULL' failed

For the third installation I've held those gconf packages back, thus running

gconf2-2.28.0-1ubuntu2
gconf2-common-2.28.0-1ubuntu2
gconf-defaults-service-2.28.0-1ubuntu2
libgconf2-4-2.38.0-1ubuntu2

with awn still working.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

This means that this is a GConf problem, not an Awn problem...unless someone can prove that this bug affects more than just gconf2-2.28.0-1ubuntu3 (and associated packages from the gconf source package).

[Mark Lee (malept)]

It seems that there has been a new release of gconf in Lucid - 2.28.0-1ubuntu4. Please upgrade to that and see if this fixes the problem. The changelog entry for that release seems to indicate that some database corruption occurred with 2.28.0-1ubuntu3.

[Vanishing (vanishing)]

Just updated to the new gconf, awn still missing..

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

I've found corruptions of awn gconf key data, ie quite a few keys have lost their values in

/apps/instances/avant-window-navigator/panel-1/panel

I'll try to restore those and see if I get get awn working again.

Here is the output trying to start up Awn Settings in the System menu using the terminal:

$ awn-settings
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/awn-settings", line 1102, in <module>
    awnmanager = awnManagerMini()
  File "/usr/bin/awn-settings", line 968, in __init__
    self.prefManager = awnPreferencesMini(self.wTree)
  File "/usr/bin/awn-settings", line 192, in __init__
    self.wTree.get_object(wtree_name), False)
  File "/usr/share/avant-window-navigator/awn-settings/awnSettingsHelper.py", line 142, in bind_to_gtk_component
    config.BIND_METHOD_FALLBACK)
glib.GError: Could not find the key specified: /apps/instances/avant-window-navigator/panel-1/panel/orient.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

Did you restart your X session after upgrading gconf?

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

Forgot to mention that the update to gconf version 1ubuntu4 didn't cure the problem.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

You might also want to re-install the avant-window-navigator-trunk package, just in case.

[Vanishing (vanishing)]

To Mark Lee:
Yes, I even restart the whole system after the update.

To Bowmore:
This is what I got for running awn-settings:
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/awn-settings", line 1102, in <module>
    awnmanager = awnManagerMini()
  File "/usr/bin/awn-settings", line 968, in __init__
    self.prefManager = awnPreferencesMini(self.wTree)
  File "/usr/bin/awn-settings", line 192, in __init__
    self.wTree.get_object(wtree_name), False)
  File "/usr/share/avant-window-navigator/awn-settings/awnSettingsHelper.py", line 142, in bind_to_gtk_component
    config.BIND_METHOD_FALLBACK)
glib.GError: Could not find the key specified: /apps/instances/avant-window-navigator/panel-1/panel/monitor_align.

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

@Mark Lee
There is no package avant-window-navigator-trunk

I've reinstalled all awn packages, no progress so far.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

Oops, sorry. I meant avant-window-navigator.

I'm still of the opinion that this is a GConf problem. Please try the following command, which should reset your panel's settings:

gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/instances/avant-window-navigator/panel-1

[Vanishing (vanishing)]

@Mark Lee:
Tried that command..still not working..

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

As I said, I've reinstalled all awn packages but still no progress.

I'll run that gconftool-2 command later tonight for the untouched install. In the current boot I've tried to reset key values but the command awn-settings after some resets pointed to other awn settings under /apps/avant-window-navigator/.. that also showed up to contain keys with values missing so it all seems to be a mess.

[Mark Lee (malept)]

If the unset panel config command doesn't work, try this one:

gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/avant-window-navigator

If that doesn't work, then I'm currently out of ideas.

[Vanishing (vanishing)]

@Mark Lee:
Sigh..gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/avant-window-navigator is not working either..

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

Nope, no progress.
Now sitting with all awn keys unassigned even after an awn complete reinstall!

There's some strange going on, but I'll have a deeper look at it tomorrow.

[Roland (Rolandixor) Taylor (rolandixor)]

anything I can do to help try to fix it? It's rather much of a setback :(

[Mark Lee (malept)]

I do not currently know how to fix this problem, sorry.

What you could attempt to do is the following:

1. Uninstall Awn.
2. Run both of the gconftool-2 commands from earlier in the bug.
3. Re-install Awn.

It's possible that this sequence of commands could reset GConf to do what we want it to do, but I have not tested it (as I don't run Lucid).

[Jess Miller (kaitwospirit)]

Mark - the process you listed didn't work for me, unfortunately. Even --purge didn't help.

I loaded things up in gconf-editor after the reinstall of AWN just to look and see if there was something obviously off. There wasn't, but I did notice that nearly everything was listed as <no value>. I'm wondering if gconf... ate the defaults somehow? However, it could just be a result of me using the gconftool-2 commands. I don't know. Could someone who hasn't done this go look and see what state their AWN-related gconf preferences are in?

[buratinas (buratinas)]

I guess that it is a bug of awn rather than of gconf, as awn as far as I know is the only application to break after the update. Maybe it just exposed one of the bugs in awn which relies on specific behavior of gconf?

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

Made another Lucid install from the today's build.

Installing awn then resulted in all awn gconf key default values being unassigned (no value). Starting up awn-settings failed as well. The current awn version was released about two weeks ago so it's most probably an awn bug.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Thank you for your bug report. This bug has already been reported, but please feel free to report any other bugs you find.

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

The bug #514281 does not fix this bug!

As I wrote i comment #24 I made a new install including gconf - 2.28.0-1ubuntu4 before installing awn. The install of awn still fails with unassigned key values.