invalid session being saved

[Brian J. Murrell]

When I log out of my desktop I get some files in ~/.config/gnome-session/saved-session/, pressumably the saving of my session so that it can be restored on next login.

But on next login I get an error from gnome-session:

env: unrecognized option '--sm-client-id'
Try 'env --help' for more information.
...
gnome-session[9609]: WARNING: Application 'gnome-panel.desktop' failed to register before timeout
gnome-session[9609]: CRITICAL: We failed, but the fail whale is dead. Sorry....

and the session aborts. Investigation leads to the following:

$ cat ~/.config/gnome-session/saved-session/gnome-panel.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Name=Panel
Comment=Launch other applications and provide various utilities to manage windows, show the time, etc.
Icon=gnome-panel
Exec=env --sm-client-id 1037b9c00525f898c4143792614760363700000101790000 XDG_MENU_PREFIX=gnome-flashback- gnome-panel
Terminal=false
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Bugzilla=GNOME
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Product=gnome-panel
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Component=general
X-GNOME-Bugzilla-Version=3.8.0
Categories=GNOME;GTK;System;Core;
OnlyShowIn=GNOME;Unity;
NoDisplay=true
X-GNOME-AutoRestart=true
X-GNOME-Autostart-Phase=Panel
X-GNOME-Provides=panel
X-Ubuntu-Gettext-Domain=gnome-panel-3.0
X-GNOME-Autostart-startup-id=1037b9c00525f898c4143792614760363700000101790000

Clearly the "env --sm-client-id" is causing this problem. But why is gnome-session saving this incorrect .desktop file for the session?

This is gnome-session-3.9.90-0ubuntu12.1 on Ubuntu Trusty.

[Brian J. Murrell (brian-interlinx)]

As you will notice, upstream closed this bug OBSOLETE with the explanation:

"Version 3.9 is an ancient unstable development version and not supported
anymore by GNOME developers. GNOME developers are no longer working on that
older version, so there will not be any bug fixes by GNOME developers for the
version that you use."

So looks like it's on you Ubuntu/Canonical to fix this as this is a bug in an LTS release.