Docky Freeze Gnome at Startup

[MikeE]

Version 0.8.3.1

Every once in a while at boot, gnome-do with docky enabled hangs the Gnome desktop at startup. The desktop is completely unusable and the only fix is go to a terminal with ctrl+alt+f1 and then killall gnome-do. Pressing ctrl+alt+f7 to get back to the desktop, the Gnome desktop is now responsive. I can then manually start gnome-do and everything is fine.

I do not believe this is binary video driver issue as I have noticed this issue both on the latest fglrx and nvidia closed restricted drivers. Also, I have only noticed this problem since enabling Docky.

Again this issue happens once every 4 or 5 boots. Does anyone know where I can look for logs on applications at startup so I can give better information on this bug?

Ubuntu 9.10, 64 bit.

[buddyd16 (donnieb)]

I also experience this issue. I tried disabling plugins but the lockup still happens occasionally at start-up. After running killall gnome-do in the ctrl-alt-f1 console I can then restart gnome-do with no issue.

[Calcipher (calcipher)]

I too was having this problem with the latest version (0.8.3.1) running on Ubuntu 9.10x64. One time when I launched Gnome-Do from the command line I got the message (paraphrasing): Gnome-do could not find Tomboy Notes on DBus is it loaded?
I was only able to get that to happen once, but disabling the Tomboy Notes Search plugin fixed my problem. It wouldn't surprise me, however, if this is more related to plugins that work with DBus than just Tomboy

[Calcipher (calcipher)]

I just noticed that this is listed as a "Docky" freeze, I am not using the Docky interface in Gnome-Do so I think it is more general.

[MikeE (mechevar21)]

Appreciate the comment. I had tomboy notes search active as well. I am going to disable tomboy notes and see if that makes a difference.

[Calcipher (calcipher)]

I started my computer up, Tomboy Notes disabled, and found gnome-do broken again. I ran a "killall -9 gnome-do" to kill off the running, but frozen, gnome-do process and then fired it up manually from the command line. This is the results of that.:

$ gnome-do

(/usr/lib/gnome-do/Do.exe:3210): GLib-WARNING **: g_set_prgname() called multiple times

(/usr/lib/gnome-do/Do.exe:3210): Wnck-CRITICAL **: wnck_set_client_type got called multiple times.

(/usr/lib/gnome-do/Do.exe:3210): libdo-WARNING **: Binding '<Super>space' failed!

Firefox.PlacesItemSource "Firefox Places" encountered an error in UpdateItems: System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
  at Mono.Data.SqliteClient.SqliteDataReader.GetString (Int32 i) [0x00000]
  at Firefox.PlacesItemSource+<LoadFolderItems>c__Iterator2.MoveNext () [0x00000]
  at System.Collections.Generic.List`1[Firefox.FolderItem].AddEnumerable (IEnumerable`1 enumerable) [0x00000]
  at System.Collections.Generic.List`1[Firefox.FolderItem]..ctor (IEnumerable`1 collection) [0x00000]
  at System.Linq.Enumerable.ToArray[FolderItem] (IEnumerable`1 source) [0x00000]
  at Firefox.PlacesItemSource.UpdateItems () [0x00000]
  at Do.Universe.Safe.SafeItemSource.UpdateItems () [0x00000] .

Please note that, at this point, gnome-do is working and super space is bound correctly (despite the error message claims otherwise). I knew that Tomboy notes, alone, was not to blame for this behavior, but I am at a loss as to what else might be causing problems.

[Calcipher (calcipher)]

An addition to my other comment (#5), I manually killed the command line gnome-do (i.e. ctrl-c) and fired it up via the Applicaitons menu. Once again gnome-do is unresponsive. I checked top and saw that gnome-do was running but would not respond to <Super>space. Running it via the applications menu (without quiting) causes the gnome-do window to pop up and this functions. I searched through the gconf-editor and confirmed that no other application had <Super>space bound.
I used the gnome-do tray icon to quit gnome-do (I turned this on so that I would now know when it was running vs when it was not) and fired it up again via the applications menu. Again, unresponsive to the <Super>space bindings. Quit again and, via the command line, I ran another "killall -9 gnome-do." I ran gnome-do, yet again, from the applications menu and found that it was now responsive to <Super>space.
After fiddling quite a bit, I'm not entirely sure that the problem, at least on my end, is entirely gnome-do. I have noticed that most of my global keybindings (via compiz) seem to have stopped working. I am not ready to call this a larger bug in Ubuntu as these keybindings were all working before I started testing gnome-do.
Any guidance from the gnome-do team on more testing?

[Calcipher (calcipher)]

(God sorry for so many updates)
I just wanted to mention that the problem with my other keybindings seems to have been related to compiz becoming disabled. I had to reinstall my NVIDIA driver to get that working again. It is strange that Compiz was working on boot, but then failed as soon as I started messing with gnome-do. Probably a coincidence.

[MikeE (mechevar21)]

Actually, since disabling the tomboy integration I have yet to experience the startup freeze on both my nvidia and ati/fglrx setups.