Slow startup

[Ricardo Pérez López]

Binary package hint: gnome-session

Since some days ago, my Intrepid is idle for ~4 seconds during GNOME startup.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Boot Intrepid. GDM appears.
2. Enter username and password. GNOME begins its startup.
3. After some seconds of disk scratching, it stops the startup for a ~4 seconds. During that time, the computer is idle: no disk activity, no startup sound, no screen messages. You can only see the mouse pointer.
4. After the ~4 seconds of inactivity, GNOME continues starting up until end.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. Do you get the issue using a stock account? Could be an application registered in the session taking some time to reply rather than a gnome-session bug

[Ricardo Pérez López (ricardo)]

I've tried with a new user and the problem persists.

But I've discovered the problem source. With trial and error, I've enabled/disabled each and every application registered in System->Preferences->Session, and I've realized that the issue is due to Window manager (gnome-wm), but only when you have Compiz enabled. So it seems to be a Compiz-related problem. Compiz takes to much time to load during GNOME startup.

What can I do with this bugreport then?

[®om (rom1v)]

I have the same problem...

[raphael (raphoun)]

when compiz enable, intrepid is idle for ~10s for me during GNOME startup, just before panels appear.

it's very annoying

[Jan Rathmann (kaiserclaudius)]

I am also seeing this on my system (amd64 installation). I was able to log the output of gnome-session by choosing "Terminal (failsafe)" as session type and then manually starting it. The "hang" occurs after the message "Starting gtk-window-decorator" appears. I hope this helps, if I can do any additional debugging, let me know.
By the way, I am using a Nvidia card (Geforce 8600GT).

Kind regards,
Jan

[philinux (philcb)]

Disabling Compiz cures this as a workaround, desktop effects none. I think the problem is with compiz not gnome or maybe a combination of both.

[Ricardo Pérez López (ricardo)]

The problem is obviously in the Compiz startup. Using Metacity is a workaround. When you use Compiz, there is an idle time which could be as longer as 10 seconds or so.

Curiously, I can't reproduce this issue on Hardy.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the issue is not a gnome-session one but rather components being slow to start or register

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue that you reported is one that should be reproducible with the live environment of the Desktop CD of the development release - Karmic Koala. It would help us greatly if you could test with it so we can work on getting it fixed in the next release of Ubuntu. You can find out more about the development release at http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/. Thanks again and we appreciate your help.

[Jan Rathmann (kaiserclaudius)]

Luckily I don't see this anymore in current Karmic.

Kind regards,
Jan

[Travis Watkins (amaranth)]

Alright, if anyone is still seeing this please do reopen the bug.