desktop, wnck and switcher applets crash on every login

[Trent Lloyd]

For some time (few weeks), every time I log into GNOME on my Dell Precision M20,
the show desktop, workspace switcher and window list applets crash, they they
work fine on a reload.

Updated breezy just now, rebooted, same happens.

Not sure what i can do to diagnose, it's possibe this is a bug picked up through
upgrading over time, I will be trying the RC release install and will
comment/close this bug if that fixes it.

[Dennis Kaarsemaker (dennis)]

This has been happening to lots of users, raising severity.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could anybody get a backtrace of the issue?

[Donn Ingle (donn-ingle)]

Have introduced a Windows user to Ubuntu 5.04. I regret not installing Kubuntu
for her instead. Gnome applets keep crashing.
The closest bug is this one. Desktop Switcher and Volume control and clock - all
have crashed. Desktop switcher is most notorious. We keep adding them again only
to have then crash on next boot, or just randomly.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> Have introduced a Windows user to Ubuntu 5.04. I regret not installing Kubuntu
> for her instead. Gnome applets keep crashing.

Thanks for the constructive comment, people putting work surely appreciate. I
don't get the issue or I would already have worked on it. Anyway have a nice day

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Ccing you too so you know than you know about comments on the bug.

[Vincent Untz (vuntz)]

Is anyone still experiencing this issue?

[Juan J. Martínez (jjmartinez)]

Here happens the same (Hoary) with a Dell Dimension 4550 with NVidia (GeForce4
MX 420).

At first it was kinda random, but from a week or so it crashes at EVERY login.

Nothing on dmesg, nothing on $HOME/.xsession-errors and nothing on
/var/log/Xorg.0.log.

[Vincent Untz (vuntz)]

Juan: if you can still reproduce the bug, it'd be great to have a stack trace.
Do you know how to get one?

[Juan J. Martínez (jjmartinez)]

(In reply to comment #8)
> Juan: if you can still reproduce the bug, it'd be great to have a stack trace.
> Do you know how to get one?

No, I don't know how to do it.

Btw, last week all seems to work fine again. It fails randomly, but knowing how
to get a tack trace would be great.

[Vincent Untz (vuntz)]

(In reply to comment #9)
> (In reply to comment #8)
> > Juan: if you can still reproduce the bug, it'd be great to have a stack trace.
> > Do you know how to get one?
>
> No, I don't know how to do it.
>
> Btw, last week all seems to work fine again. It fails randomly, but knowing how
> to get a tack trace would be great.

So, basic information is there: http://live.gnome.org/GettingTraces
One difficulty is that it looks like the crash only happens when logging in. If
this is the case, then you can log in, wait for the crash, close the dialogs,
run "gnome-session-remove gnome-panel" in a terminal (your panel will
disappear), run gdb as described in the link, run "gnome-panel" in the terminal
and you should get the crash again.

It would help to install the gnome-panel-dbg, libgtk2.0-0-dbg and
libglib2.0-0-dbg packages, by the way.

Thanks

[Trent Lloyd (lathiat)]

This has long since been resolved, closing.