Comment 0 for bug 15027

Package: gdm
Version: 2.6.0.4-1
Severity: grave
Justification: Discards error output rather than logging as requested

When an X session has been running for a while, I get the message
"...Too much output, ignoring rest..." and then all logging to my
~/.xsession-errors stops.

I googled for this message, and the only relevant hit I got
<http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gdm2/daemon/slave.c?rev=1.276> suggests
that GDM is responsible for this message.

<http://cvs.gnome.org/viewcvs/gdm2/daemon/gdm.h?rev=1.176> defines
MAX_XSESSION_ERROR_BYTES to be 80*2500 -- I guess that's supposed to
be 2500 lines at full width. (My current .xsession-errors which just
got this message is actually 4422 lines, for comparison, but about
half of those are empty, because many programs seem to include a
spurious newline with each message.)

This limitation seems a bit ill-conceived. I can imagine that it might
be useful to limit the output produced by a runaway process in rapid
succession, but it should still be possible to get log messages from a
process which runs for as long as the computer is up; eventually, if
there are no crashes or power failures, it will produce enough log
messages to exceed whatever limit you come up with.

Still, as a workaround, perhaps the Debian package could make the
limit really large.

In the meantime, feel free to tag this as "upstream" and forwarding it
to the Gnome folks.

Ultimately, the limit should probably be configurable at startup time,
with an option to disable it (perhaps by setting the limit to 0 in the
configuration), and documented.

Thanks in advance for your attention to this,

/* era */

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.4.27-1-686-smp
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages gdm depends on:
ii adduser 3.59 Add and remove users and groups
ii debconf 1.4.30.10 Debian configuration management sy
ii dpkg 1.10.23 Package maintenance system for Deb
ii gksu 1.2.2-1 graphical frontend to su
ii gnome-session 2.6.2-6 The GNOME 2 Session Manager
ii gnome-terminal [x-te 2.6.1-6 The GNOME 2 terminal emulator appl
ii libart-2.0-2 2.3.16-6 Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii libatk1.0-0 1.8.0-4 The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii libattr1 2.4.16-1 Extended attribute shared library
ii libaudiofile0 0.2.6-4 Open-source version of SGI's audio
ii libbonobo2-0 2.6.2-7 Bonobo CORBA interfaces library
ii libbonoboui2-0 2.6.1-1 The Bonobo UI library
ii libbz2-1.0 1.0.2-1 A high-quality block-sorting file
ii libc6 2.3.2.ds1-18 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii libcroco3 0.6.0-2 a generic Cascading Style Sheet (C
ii libesd0 0.2.35-2 Enlightened Sound Daemon - Shared
ii libgconf2-4 2.6.4-2 GNOME configuration database syste
ii libgcrypt11 1.2.0-4 LGPL Crypto library - runtime libr
ii libglade2-0 1:2.4.0-1 Library to load .glade files at ru
ii libglib2.0-0 2.6.1-3 The GLib library of C routines
ii libgnome-keyring0 0.2.1-3 GNOME keyring services library
ii libgnome2-0 2.6.1.2-2 The GNOME 2 library - runtime file
ii libgnomecanvas2-0 2.6.1.1-2 A powerful object-oriented display
ii libgnomeui-0 2.6.1.1cvs-1 The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf
ii libgnomevfs2-0 2.6.2-2 The GNOME virtual file-system libr
ii libgnutls11 1.0.16-9 GNU TLS library - runtime library
ii libgpg-error0 1.0-1 library for common error values an
ii libgsf-1 1.10.1-1 Structured File Library - runtime
ii libgtk2.0-0 2.4.13-1 The GTK+ graphical user interface
ii libice6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-8 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii libjpeg62 6b-9 The Independent JPEG Group's JPEG
ii liborbit2 1:2.10.2-1.1 libraries for ORBit2 - a CORBA ORB
ii libpam-modules 0.76-22 Pluggable Authentication Modules f
ii libpam-runtime 0.76-22 Runtime support for the PAM librar
ii libpam0g 0.76-22 Pluggable Authentication Modules l
ii libpango1.0-0 1.8.0-3 Layout and rendering of internatio
ii libpopt0 1.7-5 lib for parsing cmdline parameters
ii librsvg2-2 2.8.1-1 SAX-based renderer library for SVG
ii libselinux1 1.16-2 SELinux shared libraries
ii libsm6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-8 X Window System Session Management
ii libtasn1-2 0.2.10-3 Manage ASN.1 structures (runtime)
ii libwrap0 7.6.dbs-6 Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers libra
ii libx11-6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-8 X Window System protocol client li
ii libxext6 4.3.0.dfsg.1-8 X Window System miscellaneous exte
ii libxml2 2.6.11-5 GNOME XML library
ii metacity [x-window-m 1:2.8.1-4 A lightweight GTK2 based Window Ma
ii sawfish [x-window-ma 1:1.3+cvs20040617-7 A window manager for X11
ii twm [x-window-manage 4.3.0.dfsg.1-8 Tab window manager
ii xbase-clients 4.3.0.dfsg.1-8 miscellaneous X clients
ii xfce [x-window-manag 3.8.18-2 The Cholesterol Free Desktop Envir
ii xlibs 4.3.0.dfsg.1-8 X Window System client libraries m
ii xterm [x-terminal-em 4.3.0.dfsg.1-8 X terminal emulator
ii zlib1g 1:1.2.2-1 compression library - runtime

-- debconf information:
  gdm/daemon_name: /usr/bin/gdm
* shared/default-x-display-manager: gdm