GNOME/UBUNTU Session Hangs frequently

[robertgray]

Greetings:

My sessions (Edgy Eft) tends to hang frequently - especially when I'm accessing the menus. At times, the Menu Icons wouldn't display. When I logged in this evening, I rcvd this message:

<BEGIN>
There was an error starting the GNOME Settings Daemon.

Some things, such as themes, sounds, or background settings may not work correctly.

The last error message was:

Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

GNOME will still try to restart the Settings Daemon next time you log in.
<END>

What's the "remote application"? I use a cable connection to the web; but I shut down the connection since I wasn't accessing the internet.

Pls advise - thanks.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug. Do you have any error to ~/.xsession-errors, /var/log/messages or /var/log/syslog about that?

[D B (eburner)]

I have this same bug. Screenshot: http://picasaweb.google.com/xburnerx/UbuntuLinuxScreenshots/photo#5051839240363084114

To reiterate, this only happens with Gnome regardless of login manager. I have KDE & XFCE installed as well which work just fine from either gdm or kdm. It happens on two desktops for me, but not my laptop anymore after a reinstall of Feisty. I've tried to isolate what triggers this to no avail. I know what doesn't trigger it.

It's not:
 *related to nvidia card or binary drivers as I've seen this on an Intel i810 and an ATI Radeon 7500 Mobility using the ati driver
 *related to user preferences, as I've created a new user and wiped my ~/.* and the problem still exists

It must be package related somewhere since when I reinstalled the Feisty Beta on my desktop, the problem was gone. I tried to be conservative about installing packages to isolate what caused the issue, but it just came back all of a sudden and I'm not sure what brought it.

For the record, I have a desktop that only has gnome and xfce which the problem appears on. I have another desktop with KDE, Xfce, and Gnome on, but the problem occurred when it was only Gnome.

Related bugs:
 *https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/89022
 *https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk-qt-engine/+bug/83152
 *https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gtk-qt-engine/+bug/66124
 *https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/control-center/+bug/61381
 *https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/control-center/+bug/84876

~/.xsession-errors:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
/etc/gdm/PreSession/Default: Registering your session with wtmp and utmp
/etc/gdm/PreSession/Default: running: /usr/X11R6/bin/sessreg -a -w /var/log/wtmp -u /var/run/utmp -x "/var/lib/gdm/:0.Xservers" -h "" -l ":0" "burner"
/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
SESSION_MANAGER=local/ymir:/tmp/.ICE-unix/12130
esd: Esound sound daemon already running or stale UNIX socket
/tmp/.esd-1001/socket
This socket already exists indicating esd is already running.
Exiting...

(gnome-session:12130): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
Window manager warning: "" found in configuration database is not a valid value for keybinding "toggle_shaded"
Initializing nautilus-open-terminal extension
Initializing gnome-mount extension
seahorse nautilus module initialized
evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Setting timeout for 57697 1176357600 1176299903
evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Thu Apr 12 00:00:00 2007

evolution-alarm-notify-Message: Wed Apr 11 07:58:23 2007

(evolution-alarm-notify:12247): libecal-WARNING **: e-cal.c:318: Unexpected response
alarm-notify.c:368 (alarm_notify_new) - Alarm Notify New
 alarm-notify.c:304 (alarm_channel_setup) - Channel Setup
 alarm-notify.c:243 (alarm_notify_init) - Initing Alarm Notify
alarm-queue.c:1875 (alarm_queue_init)
alarm-queue.c:218 (queue_midnight_refresh) - Refresh at Thu Apr 12 00:00:00 2007

alarm-notify.c:220 (load_calendars) - Loading Calendar file:///home/burner/.evolution/calendar/local/system
alarm-notify.c:456 (alarm_notify_add_calendar) file:///home/burner/.evolut...

[D B (eburner)]

Here's the real culprit.
 *ping localhost

This command wasn't working. Seems when I upgraded to Feisty and when I was setting a static IP, I commented EVERYTHING in /etc/network/interfaces. This is not good as the 'lo' or loopback device is needed. I uncommented auto lo and the iface line for lo, ran ;sudo ifup lo', and I was back with a fast Gnome and no gray screen in the corner.

Hope this helps some of you out there. Thanks to seb for the tip.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for control-center (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]