[launcher] Crashes at startup if home directory is over NFS because of D-Conf

[Steve Blamey]

Ubuntu and Package Version :-

Description: Ubuntu 11.04
Release: 11.04

unity-2d-launcher:
  Installed: 3.8.12-0ubuntu1~bzr651
  Candidate: 3.8.12-0ubuntu1~bzr651
  Version table:
 *** 3.8.12-0ubuntu1~bzr651 0
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/unity-2d-team/unity-2d-daily/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     3.8.4.1-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages

Expected Behaviour:-

Unity-2d-launcher starts and is displayed at login.

Current Behaviour:-

Unity-2d-launcher is not displayed at login.

Checking with ps I see that the unity-2d-launcher PID is changing constantly.

Investigation:-

After killing unity-2d-launcher, I ran it from a command line and received the following error:

**
ERROR:dconf-dbus-1.c:626:dconf_dbus_client_service_func: code should not be reached
Aborted

[Steve Blamey (fedorus-deactivatedaccount)]

I have been tracking daily updates from the ppa since I first experienced this problem but it still persists. I'd be happy to investigate further if someone has any ideas where I should be looking.

[Steve Blamey (fedorus-deactivatedaccount)]

I have set-up a new user on my system and unity-2d-panel displays and works fine.

Some settings somewhere must be corrupt in my profile. Does anyone know where to look? Alternatively could the fact that my home directory is on an NFS server be causing issues with unity-2d-panel (my test user has a local home directory).

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Thanks for the report Steve.
Looking at the code of dconf it seems that DConf does not work if your home directory is over NFS.

[Steve Blamey (fedorus-deactivatedaccount)]

Thanks for updating this Florian, I was thinking it must be NFS in the end.

In the meantime, I am looking at moving XDG_CONFIG_HOME to another location on my local system and will post a workaround here when I have it tested.

[Steve Blamey (fedorus-deactivatedaccount)]

Here is my workaround to point XDG_CONFIG_HOME and XDG_CACHE_HOME to local paths instead of the default ~/.config and ~/.cache, which exist on an NFS mounted home directory in my case.

Place the attached script in /etc/profile.d/ and adjust CONFIG_BASE_DIR to your desired location. Mine is set thus:

CONFIG_BASE_DIR=/home/configs/${USER}

with /home/configs set to be writable by any user.

Then copy the contents of ~/.config and ~/.cache to CONFIG_BASE_DIR/*username*/config and cache respectively

[Allison Karlitskaya (desrt)]

This bug is actually caused by Ubuntu not properly supporting the XDG basedir specification.

[Allison Karlitskaya (desrt)]

...or by running an old dconf release from before it switched over to using XDG_RUNTIME_DIR...

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

And by old, you mean one day old?

[Luiz Angelo Daros de Luca (luizluca)]

Hello,

There is a patch in gnome bug report. Does it fix the problem? All users in my lab stopped to use gnome/unity because of this bug. Everyone went to kde. A fix would be very welcome!

[quazgar (quazgar)]

The proposed profile.d script does not fix the problem here for 11.10. Will test it again after upgrade to 12.04.

[Steve Blamey (fedorus-deactivatedaccount)]

@rubik-cube Can you provide more info on why the workaround did not work for you?

[quazgar (quazgar)]

I don't know exactly, why it does not work. The environment variables are changed correctly, i.e. if the given directories don't exist, an error pops up saying so. Starting non-GTK window managers works correctly, but GTK programs (most prominent example: Firefox) then hang as in Unity.

[Steve Blamey (fedorus-deactivatedaccount)]

Have you checked your logs for any errors? You could also double-check permissions (see #5, above and comments inside profile.d ). I can't re-test my workaround because I no longer use Unity but it should still work as far as I can see.

[quazgar (quazgar)]

I think I have to retract my comment #10. On trying after a fresh reboot, the only thing I found not working was Firefox (which was the program with problems even in TWM instead of Gnome/Unity).

Firefox & NFS is another bug though: https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=21902 This could be fixed by adding the "nolock" nfs mount option as per this forum post: http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ubuntu-linux/174468-firefox-gives-bookmarks-history-system-will-not-functional.html#post826108 Even the XDG variables workaround was not necessary any more.