Gnome with Xmonad starts without xmonad

[Jun Inoue]

The "Gnome with Xmonad" session starts up normally, but doesn't automatically launch xmonad. The Gnome panel starts
up without a window manager. When I start a terminal and manually boot up xmonad, it works fine.

[Steps to Reproduce]
At the log in prompt (I'm using lightdm), select "Gnome with Xmonad" and log in.

[Expected Behavior]
A Gnome session should start with windows managed by xmonad.

[Actual Behavior]
A Gnome session starts, but without a window manager.

[Workaround]
Add the line "xmonad&" as the second line of /usr/bin/gnome-session-xmonad, so that the file contains these three lines in total:
#! /bin/sh
xmonad&
exec gnome-session --session xmonad "$@"

A few insights: xmonad doesn't seem to be invoked at all. If I rename xmonad so that gnome-session can't find it, the session still starts up as if it didn't notice anything. OTOH, /usr/bin/gnome-session-xmonad *is* getting invoked. If I add a line in that file to start xmonad as described in the workaround above, then the session starts up with xmonad managing the windows. This could be a bug in gnome-session, but that utility works fine for all other purposes AFAICT, so I'll tentatively file this under xmonad.

I just upgraded to quantal today, but I can't tell if that's a factor as I've been using xmonad with Unity 2D before the upgrade.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: xmonad 0.10-4build2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-17.28-generic 3.5.5
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-17-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
ApportVersion: 2.6.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Oct 19 23:34:22 2012
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64+mac (20111012)
SourcePackage: xmonad
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to quantal on 2012-10-19 (0 days ago)

[Jun Inoue (jun-lambda)]

Er... I just noticed my "workaround" above doesn't work completely. This is a separate, possibly unrelated issue, but if anyone has had the same problem and is hunting for a workaround, you should add xmonad through the Gnome GUI. Go to the main menu -> system tools -> settings -> autostart applications, and add xmonad. Do NOT modify /usr/bin/gnome-session-xmonad. I wrote that based on my Japanese settings, so the exact wording may be different.

[The Problem]
If you start xmonad before gnome-session like I suggested above, then dmenu doesn't seem to work at all. I bind mod-p to spawning "dmenu_run", but if I start xmonad before gnome-session and then press mod-p, the gnome panel blinks for a second and nothing happens. If I start up gnome-session without a window manager and then invoke xmonad, dmenu_run works fine. I didn't (and won't) have time to dig deeper into this dmenu issue, but I'll put this advice up here in case someone needs a quick fix.

I'm attaching my xmonad.hs file. It's probably not related to the problem that xmonad doesn't start automatically, but it may well be related to the problem with dmenu_run not running.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.