gnome-panel doesn't die at logout (or....)

[David M. Carney]

You logout of Gnome. Later you login, but you get an error box stating that
gnome-panel could not start because it detected another instance of itself
running. Either the panel wasn't killed at logout, or it tries to start itself
twice. I suspect the latter as I see other apps (via the bottom of the Gnome
splash) occasionally appear to try to start twice.

Problem seems to be random and cannot be repeated at will.

Problem can be temporarily fixed by switching to a tty (by hitting ctrl-alt-f1)
and logging in and issuing a "killall gnome-panel".

This seems to kill one instance of the gnome-panel, thus clearing the error and
allowing the second gnome-panel instance to start normally.

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87681: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87681

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

several people have reported the problem on the list but it doesn't happen here
and I'm not sure of what could be useful to debug this ...

[Vincent Untz (vuntz)]

I see three possibilities:
  * gnome-panel didn't quit when you logged out. I don't think this is the problem.
  * gnome-panel is listed twice in the session.
  * gnome-session run gnome-panel twice (bug in gnome-session)

There was a similar bug upstream, but I can't find it right now (and it's
probably not related...)

[Morgan Collett (morgan-ubuntu)]

I have this problem occasionally too - started when I upgraded to hoary.
Currently gnome-panel is version 2.9.3-0ubuntu1.

I almost always shut down my laptop instead of just logging out, so it couldn't
be that the gnome-panel is still running - this has happened on booting up from
power off.

Stopping gdm and restarting it didn't fix the problem. A reboot generally did
fix it.

Some times it looked like the panels didn't start at all - I had a blank panel
at the top and a blank panel at the bottom. Some times the bottom panel at least
had the "minimise all" button and the window list, but nothing else - no menus,
no trash applet, no notifier applets.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I have this problem occasionally too - started when I upgraded to hoary.
> Currently gnome-panel is version 2.9.3-0ubuntu1.

yep, I've played with gnome-session-save yesterday and got this problem this
morning too.

> Some times it looked like the panels didn't start at all - I had a blank panel
> at the top and a blank panel at the bottom. Some times the bottom panel at least
> had the "minimise all" button and the window list, but nothing else - no menus,
> no trash applet, no notifier applets.

That's probably http://bugzilla.ubuntu.com/4794. I've turned the hal support
off, do you still get this bug ?

>

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Vincent:

$ grep panel .gnome2/session | grep Program
11,Program=gnome-panel
14,Program=gnome-panel

That's not normal I guess ? Do you know if that's a gnome-panel or a
gnome-session issue ?

[Vincent Untz (vuntz)]

Sebastien: that's not normal. I don't think it's a gnome-panel issue. It's
probably a gnome-session issue and I think it happens only when you save your
session.

I found the upstream bug: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=87681
There's not much more information here...

[Vincent Untz (vuntz)]

If you want to look for a fix, you'll probably need to look when gnome-session
adds something to this file. There's probably a flaw in the algorithm.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks Vincent. I'll try to dig in the session stuff but probably not today.

[lexual (lexhider)]

(In reply to comment #0)
> You logout of Gnome. Later you login, but you get an error box stating that
> gnome-panel could not start because it detected another instance of itself
> running. Either the panel wasn't killed at logout, or it tries to start itself
> twice. I suspect the latter as I see other apps (via the bottom of the Gnome
> splash) occasionally appear to try to start twice.
>
> Problem seems to be random and cannot be repeated at will.
>

I have the same behaviour here on an up to date hoary box.
I can say that it probably not a gnome-session issue because I have no session
stuff saved (i.e. ls ~/.gnome2/*sess* gives no files).
It doesn't happen everytime.
When it does happen I head to a console and typing 'ps aux | grep panel' will
give me a line with 'gnome-panel --sm-client-id default2' in it. Once I kill
this things work fine.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

have you added gnome-panel in your startup scripts somewhere ? There is no
reason to get a software starting automatically on its own if it's not registred
in the session or in a startup script

[lexual (lexhider)]

(In reply to comment #10)
> have you added gnome-panel in your startup scripts somewhere ? There is no
> reason to get a software starting automatically on its own if it's not registred
> in the session or in a startup script
good catch! It turns out I had an old .xsession laying about that was only
running 'exec gnome-session'. I have been unable
to duplicate this bug since I moved .xsession to .xsession~.

[lexual (lexhider)]

Oops, I miss read things. No I am not explicitly running gnome-panel anywhere.
And by the way, the bug is still present without my .xsession.

[John Steele Scott (toojays)]

I am getting the same message about the panel already running . . . but I can't
see a panel on my screen :(

For me I think this started after I pressed Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart the X
server after change xorg.conf.

[Vincent Untz (vuntz)]

John: do you see gnome-panel in "ps -u $USER"?

[John Steele Scott (toojays)]

Vincent: I didn't check for it, I just hit "killall gnome-panel" as suggested in
the original report. But that did the trick, as after that the panels became
visible at the top and bottom of my screen.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

This happens reliably for me in Hoary when the user is not in the audio group
(my fiancee's account initially wasn't, by mistake). Can gnome-panel be made to
behave better when the user is not in group audio?

[Vincent Untz (vuntz)]

> Can gnome-panel be made to behave better when the user is not in group audio?

Well... I don't see any reason why being in group audio or not could have an
impact here.
I'm more and more convinced this is a problem in gnome-session.

[David M. Carney (carney1979)]

Just an added note -

This seems to be corrected quite nicely in Hoary. I have not had ANY reoccurance
since upgrading.

If YOU feel this warrants closure of this bug, then please feel free!

David

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

works fine with hoary according to the submitter, bug closed.