Gnome-session crashed by various applications

[Aisano]

Binary package hint: gnome-session

Since I upgraded to Ubuntu 11.04 a couple of weeks ago my gnome-session crashed several times when I was starting some application or opening a new window. At first I was not sure whether it wasn't always related to Mozilla Thunderbird but today my session crashed when I double-clicked a PDF file in Nautilus, expecting it to open in Evince. It is like in bug #282939 where Gnusound propagates a signal to the whole process group, which includes the running gnome-session.
The effect is, ofcourse, that the session ends and the log-in mask is presented.
Could it be that the X11 server generates (and propagates) such a signal on creation of a new window? Only I see that the X server, which is up even before log-in, is not running under the same process group as my gnome-session.
I suppose the killing of the session prevents any attempts to gather useful data about the crash. Log files show nothing suspicious (to me), except maybe this in .xsession-errors:

(process:3099): DEBUG: desktop-launch-listener.vala:118: ran with uri: file:/... <the PDF file I was trying to open>

[Aisano (info-ais-sanmarino)]

It just happened again: When I opened calibre and clicked on the "convert" icon my GNOME session crashed, leaving me with the login screen. Linux was fine and even preserved my open DSL connection.

I attach my auth.log and syslog, which seem to contain a few suspicious lines, such as:
* polkitd(authority=local): Unregistered Authentication Agent for unix-session:/org/freedesktop/ConsoleKit/Session2...
* gdm-session-worker[4652]: WARNING: Unable to load file '/etc/gdm/custom.conf'...
* gdm-simple-greeter[4649]: Gtk-WARNING: /build/buildd/gtk+2.0-2.24.4/gtk/gtkwidget.c:5687: widget not within a GtkWindow
* gdm-session-worker[4652]: GLib-GObject-CRITICAL: g_value_get_boolean: assertion `G_VALUE_HOLDS_BOOLEAN (value)' failed

Especially the assertion in the last line does not seem very reassuring to me but I have no idea what may have caused it. Grepping older logs shows, however, that this assertion was also logged on days when Gnome did not crash.

[Aisano (info-ais-sanmarino)]

To-day, my Nautilus suddenly became unresponsive to the mouse. Opening a new place would still produce a new Nautilus window but it would not react to any mouse click (not even on the WM close icon, though it moved when clicked). So I opened a shell and sent Nautilus a HUP (-1) signal. No reaction. When I send a -15 signal, Nautilus terminated as expected but so did the whole Gnome session. Did Nautilus propagate the signal to the whole process group?

[Aisano (info-ais-sanmarino)]

In the meantime I upgraded to 11.11. The problem has not manifested itself since then, so I can no longer reproduce or check it.

[gf (gf-interlinks-deactivatedaccount)]

Closed per reporter’s feedback.

[Aisano (info-ais-sanmarino)]

Ĉi tiu adreso ne plu funkcias pro troa spamado. Bonvolu uzi la adreson "informo…" anstataŭ "info…". Dankon pro via kompreno.

Questo indirizzo non funziona più. Servirsi per favore del nuovo indirizzo "informo…" (invece di "info…"). Grazie.

Diese Adresse ist nicht mehr aktiv. Bitte verwenden Sie statt "info…" die neue Adresse "informo…". Danke für Ihr Verständnis