"failed to load applet OAFIID:TomboyApplet" After Upgrade to 8.10

[Amanda Bee]

Binary package hint: tomboy

I recently upgraded from 8.04 to 8.10.

After logging in to Gnome I get an error: "failed to load applet OAFIID:TomboyApplet" -- I get the same error when I try to add Tomboy to my panel. I'm the only user on this machine so this doesn't appear connected to Bug #239560 https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tomboy/+bug/239560

Tomboy does not appear on my panel. Trying to launch it from the application menu gets me just silence.

.xsession-errors says:
** (gnome-panel:6533): WARNING **: panel-applet-frame.c:1270: failed to load applet OAFIID:TomboyApplet:
System exception: IDL:Bonobo/GeneralError:1.0 : Child process did not give an error message, unknown failure occurred

tomboy:
  Installed: 0.12.0-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 0.12.0-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 0.12.0-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com intrepid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Amanda Bee (amandabee)]

Also, tried to launch from the command line and got this:

Unhandled Exception: System.DllNotFoundException: intl
  at (wrapper managed-to-native) Mono.Unix.Catalog:bindtextdomain (intptr,intptr)
  at Mono.Unix.Catalog.Init (System.String package, System.String localedir) [0x00000]
  at Tomboy.Tomboy.Main (System.String[] args) [0x00000]

Unhandled Exception: System.DllNotFoundException: msvcrt
  at (wrapper managed-to-native) Mono.Unix.Native.Stdlib:free (intptr)
  at Mono.Unix.UnixMarshal.FreeHeap (IntPtr ptr) [0x00000]
  at Mono.Unix.Catalog.Init (System.String package, System.String localedir) [0x00000]
  at Tomboy.Tomboy.Main (System.String[] args) [0x00000]

Tried aptitude reinstall tomboy and still getting it.

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

This appears to be a broken Mono install, similar to this Debian bug reported against gnome-do:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=522732

The recommendation there was to `sudo aptitude purge mono-common` and then reinstall gnome-do (or Tomboy, in this case).

[Amanda Bee (amandabee)]

Which I did just do: it didn't work. I'm still getting the same errors.

[Amanda Bee (amandabee)]

What did work:

% mkdir .mono
% cp /etc/mono/config ~/.mono/config

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

This may caused by another bug reported in Debian, about Mono not following symbolic links for some things:

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=500799

Any chance your /usr, /lib/, or /etc are symbolic links?

Either way, it would be helpful if you could run the following command:

strace -e trace=file tomboy &> trace.out && grep "/config\"" trace.out

Use ctrl+c to quit it after running for a second or two, then paste the output here. Mine looks like this:

$ strace -e trace=file tomboy &> blah.out && grep "/config\"" blah.out
^Copen("/etc/mono/config", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
open("/home/sandy/.mono/config", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/selinux/config", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

I'm curious where yours is looking *instead* of /etc/mono/config.

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

This is a Mono issue, not a Tomboy issue.

[Amanda Bee (amandabee)]

Ahh!

Yes: /usr and /tmp are symlinks on my system because ... I forget the specifics but in my initial install and partitioning I'd put them on a separate partition from / and that was causing trouble for Ubuntu. (My best writeup of that is here: http://velociraptor.info/notes/?p=307) /etc isn't though.

Output of strace:

$ strace -e trace=file tomboy &> trace.out && grep "/config\"" trace.out
open("/mnt/vartemp/usr/etc/mono/config", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/home/amanda/.mono/config", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
open("/etc/selinux/config", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

[Amanda Bee (amandabee)]

So it is looking for /usr/etc/mono/config?

[Sandy Armstrong (sanfordarmstrong)]

Yes, this now looks exactly like the Mono bug described in the Debian ticket I linked above. I'll try to talk to the upstream Mono guys, and work toward a proper resolution.

If you experience any additional oddness in Mono apps, please report it here, so we can better understand the consequences of this bug.