Unity Qt session broken after an update

[Adnane Belmadiaf]

Binary package hint: unity

After run an update today, Unity Qt wont start and it have the classic desktop instead of Unity

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: unity (not installed)
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-24.42-generic 2.6.35.8
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-24-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Jan 19 17:37:53 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386 (20101007)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

moved to unity-2d ubuntu package but marked invalid since you are using the ppa and not the package in Natty archives

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Thank you for the bug report Adnane. A few questions for you:

Are you sure it's Unity 2D? Is it written Unity 2D in the session chooser (GDM)?
Do you have the unity-2d-team PPA installed?
Can you please attach the content of the file $HOME/.xsession-errors ?

Thanks!

[Maarten Fonville (maarten-fonville)]

I am also affected by this error since the last update.
I will do some more investigation in what is the exact cause.
At the moment I can only state that starting the unity-2d-launcher and unity-2d-panel from a commandline do work. But gnome-panel is unkillable (will always restart itself) and will position itself over the unity panel again.

[Adnane Belmadiaf (daker)]

Hi Florian ,
- it's written "Unity Qt".
- Yes from ppa:unity-2d-team/unity-2d-daily
- .xsession-errors http://pastebin.com/CT61neuL
and also i have noticed errors when i run the components individually http://pastebin.com/4UsMv6Vv

[Tyler R (trowe)]

I had similar. After updating last night (I am using the unity-2d-team ppa) I got the desktop with no unity-2d-panel or unity-2d-launcher. I logged in on the recovery console and re-ran "sudo apt-get install unity-2d-default-settings" and everything came up fine. This happened on two separate machines. I think I noticed name changes from qt to 2d in some of the files, and my session chooser now says Unity 2d. Before the update it said Unity Qt. Maybe something due to that?

[Maarten Fonville (maarten-fonville)]

@trowe
I also reinstalled the packages (several times, also purged it) and have changed in the login screen the selection to the 'new' Unity 2D. But still the problem persists. Maybe you also did change/reinstall/removed/cleaned something else?

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Adnane: do you have a "Unity 2D" appearing in the list of sessions? Can you try running unity-qt-launcher and see if it works?

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Maarten @T Rowe @Adnane: how did you guys do the upgrade?

Can you all paste the result of:
$ apt-cache show unity-qt-default-settings
$ apt-cache show unity-2d-default-settings

[Adnane Belmadiaf (daker)]

@Folrian i don't have unity-qt-launcher but i have unity-2d-launcher it runs without any problems, if i run unity-qt-panel or unity-qt-places i got errors, here the terminal output http://pastebin.com/4UsMv6Vv .

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Adnane: thanks for the answer. Do you have an entry called 'Unity 2D' in the session chooser (GDM)? What is the result of apt-cache show unity-qt-default-settings unity-2d-default-settings

[Adnane Belmadiaf (daker)]

@Florian i don't have "Unity 2D" entry, i have only "Unity Qt", i have run the update-manager after i installed the updates, i got the partial upgrades window. i will post the results of the command tomorrow, i don't have access to the machine right now.

[Tyler R (trowe)]

@Maarten: I don't think I did anything other than reinstall unity-2d-default-settings. As a matter of fact, I think I did unity-qt-default-settings on the first machine. Both came up back normally, with both showing Unity 2d in the chooser, and I checked version numbers and they are current to what is showing in Launchpad.

@Florian: I used update manager, and it gave me a partial upgrade, which I performed. When I logged off and back on, I got desktop only. That's when I restarted, went to recovery console and did what I stated above.

Requested files attached.

[Tyler R (trowe)]

sorry, missed the second log

[Maarten Fonville (maarten-fonville)]

I did an update via:
sudo aptitude update
sudo aptitude safe-upgrade

afterwards, when already having the issues, I removed the transitional -qt packages.
Here the output as requested:

maarten@melcene:~$ apt-cache show unity-qt-default-settings
Package: unity-qt-default-settings
Source: unity-qt-default-settings
Priority: optional
Section: x11
Installed-Size: 36
Maintainer: Unity Qt Developers <email address hidden>
Architecture: all
Version: 0.1.32
Replaces: unity-qt-session
Depends: unity-2d-default-settings, libuqpanel0 (>= 0.4)
Conflicts: unity-qt-session
Filename: pool/main/u/unity-qt-default-settings/unity-qt-default-settings_0.1.32_all.deb
Size: 3828
MD5sum: dcdd1a043089c0d2b0bd3e9dfbc2fc77
SHA1: 6e7e6c6ec7b322ee0a79c1932800a5b4b1657dc4
Description: dummy transitional package for unity-2d-default-settings
 This transitional package helps users transition to the
 unity-2d-default-settings package. Once this package and its dependencies
 are installed you can safely remove it.

maarten@melcene:~$ apt-cache show unity-2d-default-settings
Package: unity-2d-default-settings
Source: unity-2d-default-settings
Priority: optional
Section: x11
Installed-Size: 132
Maintainer: Unity 2D Developers <email address hidden>
Architecture: all
Version: 0.1.29~bzr46
Replaces: unity-qt-default-settings (<= 0.1.28)
Provides: unity-qt-default-settings
Depends: indicator-application, indicator-appmenu, indicator-datetime, indicator-me, indicator-messages, indicator-session, indicator-sound, unity-2d-launcher, unity-2d-panel, unity-2d-places, unity-2d-spread, metacity (>= 2.30.2-0ubuntu1upicek2), gnome-session-bin, gnome-settings-daemon, nautilus, policykit-1-gnome, gnome-power-manager, ubuntu-wallpapers, gtk2-engines-pixbuf, light-themes
Conflicts: unity-qt-default-settings (<= 0.1.28)
Filename: pool/main/u/unity-2d-default-settings/unity-2d-default-settings_0.1.29~bzr46_all.deb
Size: 6608
MD5sum: b5d699f4b606fa4d0fb3c15a5704c74e
SHA1: 2abb6f941c585067107e13649b2b47dbb3d35e34
Description: Default settings for Unity 2D
 This package provides common configuration files and gconf-defaults for
 Unity 2D. It also provides the logins session needed to start Unity
 2D at login.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Marteen: I uploaded some new versions of the packages, can you try the following:

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

and paste the entire output here.

[Maarten Fonville (maarten-fonville)]

I upgraded, but not had directly caught the apt-get output itself.
So I will givere the dpkg log of the upgrade.
I will also attach the .xsession-errors file

2011-01-19 22:55:52 startup archives unpack
2011-01-19 22:55:53 upgrade libuqpanel0 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr375
2011-01-19 22:55:53 status half-configured libuqpanel0 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:53 status unpacked libuqpanel0 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:53 status half-installed libuqpanel0 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:55 status half-installed libuqpanel0 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:56 status unpacked libuqpanel0 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr375
2011-01-19 22:55:56 status unpacked libuqpanel0 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr375
2011-01-19 22:55:56 upgrade unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr375
2011-01-19 22:55:56 status half-configured unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:56 status unpacked unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:56 status half-installed unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:56 status triggers-pending man-db 2.5.7-4
2011-01-19 22:55:56 status half-installed unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:56 status triggers-pending bamfdaemon 0.2.58-0ubuntu2
2011-01-19 22:55:56 status half-installed unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:56 status triggers-pending python-gmenu 2.30.4-0ubuntu1
2011-01-19 22:55:56 status half-installed unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:57 status triggers-pending desktop-file-utils 0.16-0ubuntu4
2011-01-19 22:55:57 status half-installed unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:59 status half-installed unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:59 status unpacked unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr375
2011-01-19 22:55:59 status unpacked unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr375
2011-01-19 22:55:59 upgrade unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr375
2011-01-19 22:55:59 status half-configured unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:59 status unpacked unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:59 status half-installed unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:55:59 status half-installed unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:56:00 status half-installed unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:56:00 status half-installed unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:56:00 status half-installed unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:56:01 status half-installed unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:56:02 status unpacked unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr375
2011-01-19 22:56:02 status unpacked unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr375
2011-01-19 22:56:02 upgrade unity-2d-places 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr375
2011-01-19 22:56:02 status half-configured unity-2d-places 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:56:02 status unpacked unity-2d-places 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:56:02 status half-installed unity-2d-places 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:56:02 status half-installed unity-2d-places 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:56:02 status half-installed unity-2d-places 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr374
2011-01-19 22:56:02 status half-ins...

[Maarten Fonville (maarten-fonville)]

Oh, and most important to note, of course. Is that the problem is still not solved :(
The result is still exactly the same as before.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Maarten and @Adnane: I believe the packages solving the problems are now uploaded. Can you please do a dist-upgrade or use update-manager to get the latest versions and report back here with what is still broken?

$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Thank you very much for your patience.

[Maarten Fonville (maarten-fonville)]

I upgraded to this latest version.
The problem is partly fixed. Unity-2d-launcher seems to be starting correctly at login. But the unity-2d-panel is still not appearing, and gnome-panel does appear instead.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Maarten: At that point I don't really know what's going on with your session nor how to solve it I am afraid.

[Maarten Fonville (maarten-fonville)]

Hmm, I just restarted and this time unity-2d-launcher did not come up. So the situation as before report #20.

Can you tell me how I can "clean" maybe my unity settings in a way that I can test an as-new Unity-2D installation?
(I have experience with gconf-editor and so, thus if you can just specifiy which directories and gconf keys have influence I will be able to delete them with ease)

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

creating a new user account might be useful(?)

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 6:15 PM, Maarten Fonville <<email address hidden>
> wrote:

> Hmm, I just restarted and this time unity-2d-launcher did not come up.
> So the situation as before report #20.
>
> Can you tell me how I can "clean" maybe my unity settings in a way that I
> can test an as-new Unity-2D installation?
> (I have experience with gconf-editor and so, thus if you can just specifiy
> which directories and gconf keys have influence I will be able to delete
> them with ease)
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to unity-
> 2d in ubuntu.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/705035
>
> Title:
> Unity Qt session broken after an update
>
> Status in Unity 2D:
> Incomplete
> Status in “unity-2d” package in Ubuntu:
> Invalid
>
> Bug description:
> Binary package hint: unity
>
> After run an update today, Unity Qt wont start and it have the classic
> desktop instead of Unity
>
> ProblemType: Bug
> DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
> Package: unity (not installed)
> ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-24.42-generic 2.6.35.8
> Uname: Linux 2.6.35-24-generic i686
> Architecture: i386
> Date: Wed Jan 19 17:37:53 2011
> InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Release i386
> (20101007)
> ProcEnviron:
> LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
> SHELL=/bin/bash
> SourcePackage: unity
>
>
>

[Maarten Fonville (maarten-fonville)]

That's a bit too radical for me. Since I have a lot of other specific settings for lots of applications which would take a lot of time to copy back. Most easy would be to delete the relevant files in the userprofile.

[Adnane Belmadiaf (daker)]

@Florian I upgraded to the latest version. now i have the "Unity 2D" but the issue still exists it shows the classic session without desktop drawing. also i run the unity-2d-panel from the command-line it runs without any problem, but the gnome restarts itself automatically.

[Adnane Belmadiaf (daker)]

Sorry i mean gnome-panel not gnome it self :)

[Maarten Fonville (maarten-fonville)]

I was able to fix my problem by making a kind of clean unity 2d session:

system->startup applications->options-> removed the check for 'automatically remember applications when logging out'

removed everything from ~/.config/gnome-session/saved-session/

now unity 2d does start, and gnome-panel does not anymore :)

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Maarten: thanks for the awesome solution. I will try to see if we can push it to everybody easily via the packages.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Adnane: please do not appy Maarten's fix as I would love for you to try the fix I will try to push soon, ok?

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

s/appy/apply

[Adnane Belmadiaf (daker)]

@Florian this option 'automatically remember applications when logging out' is unchecked for me and the folder ~/.config/gnome-session/saved-session/ is empty. so i guess this not the real fix for me :) i'll wait for your fix.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

darn, right.

[Lucazade (lucazade)]

I've temporary fixed the issue by editing via gconf-editor /desktop/gnome/session/required_components
"panel" key from "gnome-panel" to "unity-2d-panel"

[Maarten Fonville (maarten-fonville)]

@lucazade
Strange, in my gconf that key was already unity-2d-panel

Looks like some various gnome & unity components are pulling conflicting strings...

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

It seems like one potential problem is that the gconf keys setup by unity-2d-default-settings did not get set correctly during the upgrade for some reason. The postinst of this package is supposed to trigger updating of the gconf keys, so not sure why this wouldn't have worked. Couple of things to try as workarounds:

1) from terminal run the following:
sudo update-gconf-defaults --source /usr/share/gconf/unity-2d/mandatory --destination /var/lib/gconf/unity-2d.mandatory --no-signal
sudo update-gconf-defaults --source /usr/share/gconf/unity-2d/default --destination /var/lib/gconf/unity-2d.default --no-signal

2) logout and log back in using Unity 2D session

If you still don't get correct panel, launcher, etc, then try the following while logged into the Unity 2D session:
1) run the following commands from a terminal
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components_list --type=list --list-type=string [windowmanager,panel,launcher,places,filemanager]
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager --type=string metacity
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/panel --type=string unity-2d-panel
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/launcher --type=string unity-2d-launcher
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/places --type=string unity-2d-places
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/filemanager --type=string nautilus

2) log out and back in using Unity 2D session

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

Another thought after reading back through the comments, you mike want to first remove the saved session before modifying the gconf keys:

mv ~/.config/gnome-session/saved-session ~/.config/gnome-sessino/saved-session.bak

[Shelby McGregor (canadian-birch)]

I've tried all of these suggestions and now the panel runs on startup, but the launcher does not. It now runs normally through terminal, however; it's no longer broken.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Shelby: can you post your ~/.xsession-errors file please? As well as the output of gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/launcher

[Shelby McGregor (canadian-birch)]

Output:

unity-2d-launcher

[Adnane Belmadiaf (daker)]

@Florian @Bill the second part of your fix works great, now i got the session is working.

[Adnane Belmadiaf (daker)]

i mean this fix :
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components_list --type=list --list-type=string [windowmanager,panel,launcher,places,filemanager]
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager --type=string metacity
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/panel --type=string unity-2d-panel
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/launcher --type=string unity-2d-launcher
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/places --type=string unity-2d-places
gconftool-2 --set /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/filemanager --type=string nautilus

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Great to hear that Adnane.

@Shelby: what is the output of gconftool-2 --get /desktop/gnome/session/required_components_list ?

[Shelby McGregor (canadian-birch)]

Output:

[windowmanager,panel,launcher,places,filemanager]

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

@shelby
after logging in it's possible the launcher is running but just not visible (see bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/705336
).
Can you run this command and paste the output once you get back into the situation:
ps auwx | grep unity

thanks

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Summary:

- Adnane: issues fixed by resetting the GConf entries manually
- Maarten: issues fixed by disabling the option 'automatically remember applications when logging out'
- T Rowe: issues fixed by reinstalling unity-2d-default-settings on one machine and reinstalling unity-qt-default-settings on the other machine
- Shelby: remaining issue: launcher might be launched but not visible

[Shelby McGregor (canadian-birch)]

The launcher is now running from startup. Thanks for the help! I'm not really sure what did it, because it certainly wasn't working yesterday.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Bill: what do you think should be our next action? I don't think we can do much more via the packages. We might want to document the resetting GConf keys instructions somewhere.

[Maarten Fonville (maarten-fonville)]

Maybe that (re)setting the gconf keys can be included in the Unity binary or session manager (where 'Unity 2D' is chosen) in some way?

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Maarten: the issue is that this setting of gconf keys is already included in the installation process of unity-2d-default-settings. For some reason it did not work for Adnane though.

[Adnane Belmadiaf (daker)]

Hello @Florian, here is my dpkg log, i hope this will help you :

-- Install --
2011-01-17 09:38:48 install unity-asset-pool <néant> 0.8.18-0ubuntu1
2011-01-17 09:38:49 install unity-place-applications <néant> 0.2.26-0ubuntu2
2011-01-17 09:38:50 install unity-place-files <néant> 0.5.32-0ubuntu1
2011-01-17 09:38:50 install unity-qt-launcher <néant> 0.2~bzr358maverick2
2011-01-17 09:38:51 install unity-qt-panel <néant> 0.2~bzr358maverick2
2011-01-17 09:38:52 install unity-qt-places <néant> 0.2~bzr358maverick2
2011-01-17 09:38:53 install unity-qt-spread <néant> 0.2~bzr358maverick2
2011-01-17 09:38:53 install unity-qt-default-settings <néant> 0.1.28
2011-01-19 10:19:49 install unity-2d-launcher <néant> 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr373
2011-01-20 14:34:17 install unity-2d-panel <néant> 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376
2011-01-20 14:34:19 install unity-2d-places <néant> 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376
2011-01-20 14:34:21 install unity-2d-spread <néant> 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376
2011-01-20 14:34:22 install unity-2d-default-settings <néant> 0.1.33~bzr49

-- Upgrade --
2011-01-21 10:19:34 upgrade unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr378
2011-01-21 10:19:37 upgrade unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr378
2011-01-21 10:19:38 upgrade unity-2d-places 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr378
2011-01-21 10:19:41 upgrade unity-2d-spread 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr378
2011-01-21 10:19:42 upgrade unity-2d-default-settings 0.1.33~bzr49 0.1.33~bzr50
2011-01-21 10:19:43 upgrade unity-qt-default-settings 0.1.33~bzr49 0.1.33~bzr50

-- Remove --
2011-01-19 10:15:38 startup packages remove
2011-01-19 10:15:45 remove unity-qt-launcher 0.2~bzr358maverick2 0.2~bzr358maverick2
2011-01-20 16:25:07 startup packages remove
2011-01-20 16:25:08 remove unity-qt-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376
2011-01-20 16:25:08 remove unity-qt-places 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376
2011-01-20 16:25:09 remove unity-qt-spread 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376

[Shelby McGregor (canadian-birch)]

Once again, it's broken. On first login, the launcher was there, but no panel. On second login, there was no launcher, but the panel was there, although the indicator-applets were missing.

I haven't done anything different since yesterday; I shut down and started up normally, didn't fiddle with the terminal, nothing. No idea why it's not working properly again.

[Shelby McGregor (canadian-birch)]

Sorry to keep bothering you all, but it's working now after restarting. I guess sometimes Unity loads and sometimes it doesn't...

[Lucazade (lucazade)]

When it happens that doesn't work open a terminal with Ctrl+Alt+T
and type:
ps auwx | grep unity

this way you can see if unity is working but not it is not visible.
paste here the output

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Shelby: and also attach the files in your home directory called .xsession-errors

Thanks!

[Shelby McGregor (canadian-birch)]

Okay.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Shelby: you have not upgraded to the latest version. Please do so by issuing the following commands in a terminal:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Then if could post the result of $ ps auwx | grep unity and the file ~/.xsession-errors that would be fantastic.

Thanks.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

The original issue experienced by Adnane is tracked by bug 706411
Shelby's issues are tracked by bug 705336 (launcher) and bug 705074 (panel).