herd3 desktop: gnome does not start on powerbook G4

[sam tygier]

when booting the herd 3 powerpc desktop cd, gnome doesn't start. the gnome splash shows, then disapears. only the default brown gradient shows.the mouse moves, right cliking does nothing.

i can CTRL+ALT+F1 to a terminal. top shows that metacity, nautilus, gnome-panel etc are running. nothing is at high cpu.

the date is correct, and lo is up.

there are no errors in dmesg.

running
DISPLAY=:0 gnome-terminal
and switching to CTRL+ALT+F7 shows the window boarder of gnome-terminal, but inside the boarder is just white.

running
killall esd
causes the booting and loading of gnome to continue

[didier (did447-deactivatedaccount)]

what's in /home/ubuntu/.xsession-errors?

Only lo? can try with the network connected?

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

i can connect to the internet over wireless.

i also found that non-gnome applications launch ok from the command line. eg firefox, xterm

[didier (did447-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks but not that much info in it... something doesn't start but which one...

You can try to run ps ax from a console or try to boot while connected
to a network.

Didier

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

here is the output from ps aux. (with firefox and an xterm started).

there are no network problems. do you still think booting plugged into ethernet will help?

[didier (did447-deactivatedaccount)]

>
> there are no network problems. do you still think booting plugged into
> ethernet will help?
I'm not sure, I can't reproduce it but I haven't a powerbook with a
working wifi.
From your ps output it's like something is holding a lock on bonobo
and doesn't release it (applets are missing).

Personally I would wait one week and retry with a newer CD, if you
have time of course. From my tests there's a lot of timing issues with
dbus and all.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

i tried with it plugged into ethernet, no improvement.

also tried with the 20070206 live cd, and it stopped loading slightly earlier, no gnome splash screen.

i'll try again in a few days

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

i have found that if i run
killall esd
when the live cd stops booting, then it continues, and loads the desktop normally.

[Neil Burlock (malone)]

I'm getting this problem with both the AMD64 version of herd 3 and the i386 version of herd 4 after installing on a Compaq V3118AU.

I don't know if it's a related problem or not, but while this is happening I'm also getting sound looping when the gdm login screen appears.

I've found an alternate solution to killall esd: if I boot into the console from grub, then exit, I can log in successfully without doing anything else, and additionally, audio doesn't loop.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

this is possibly the same as Bug #40176

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

this is still present in herd 4

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

if i install herd 4 i still get the problem.

also

aplay /usr/share/sounds/login.wav
hangs

but
aplay /usr/share/sounds/logout.wav
plays fine.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

on installed herd4 turning the startup sound off in the sound control panel makes booting work.

[Neil Burlock (malone)]

Adding

pnpbios=off

to the grub boot options resolved this issue and both logging in and sound are working now.

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

pnpbios=off did not make any difference

(i used "live pnpbios=off" at the yaboot prompt)

[Neil Burlock (malone)]

Just to confirm what I did. Boot the CD, press F6 to display the boot options which should look something like:

Boot Options root=/dev/ram rw quiet splash --

At then end of the line add pnpbios=off:

Boot Options root=/dev/ram rw quiet splash -- pnpbios=off

Then press enter to start

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

Neil, the boot process is slightly different on powerpc, but i think i did effectively the same thing.

this still happens in herd5

[sam tygier (samtygier)]

investigating using aplay a bit more.

it seems that aplay can hang on any of the .wavs in /usr/share/sounds . it is just far more likely to hang on long ones like login.wav