When I log on to Gnome 2.8.0-r1 from GDM, Gnome displays the splash screen and then hangs until I switch to a virtual terminal and kill bonobo-activation-server process. After this, I'm able to use Gnome but I get an error message: "There was an error starting the GNOME Settings Daemon". Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. emerge gnome 2.8.0-r1 2. log into Gnome from GDM 3. Actual Results: Gnome hangs in splash screen until bonobo-activation-server process is killed. Expected Results: Gnome starts normally and everything is super. I've tried to: * remove all gnome-related ebuilds I've installed and recompile Gnome 2.8.0-r1, * downgrade libbonobo and libbonoboui to 2.6.x, * create a new user and log in with it, * log in as root, * remove all gnome-related things from my home dir and log in. ...but the problem persists. I can use Gnome but some programs crash or behave strangely when the settings aren't found (due to the Gnome settings daemon not starting). emerge info as follows: Portage 2.0.51_rc9 (default-x86-2004.2, gcc-3.4.2, glibc-2.3.4.20041006-r0, 2.6.9-rc2-love4 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.9-rc2-love4 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1800+ Gentoo Base System version 1.5.3 Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.59-r5 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.5-r1 Binutils: sys-devel/binutils-2.15.92.0.2-r1 Headers: sys-kernel/linux26-headers-2.6.8.1-r1 Libtools: sys-devel/libtool-1.5.2-r5 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86 ~x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe -fforce-addr -fomit-frame-pointer -fstack-protector" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/mozilla/defaults/pref /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O3 -pipe -fforce-addr -fomit-frame-pointer -fstack-protector" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache distlocks sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ftp.du.se/pub/os/gentoo http://gentoo.spb.ru/rsync ftp://ftp.linux.ee/pub/gentoo/distfiles/ http://mir.zyrianes.net/gentoo/" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X aalib acpi alsa apm arts avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bonobo cdr crypt curl curlwrappers dga directfb divx4linux doc dvd encode esd f77 fbcon flac foomaticdb gdbm gif gnome gphoto2 gpm gtk gtk2 gtkhtml hardened hardenedphp imagemagick imlib ipv6 joystick jpeg libg++ libwww mad mikmod mime mmx mng motif mozilla mpeg nas ncurses nls nptl offensive oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl php pic pie png posix python qt quicktime readline sdl slang speex spell ssl svga tcltk tcpd tetex theora tiff truetype unicode usb videos wmf x86 xine xinerama xml xml2 xmms xpm xprint xv xvid zlib"
I have the same problem but with gnome 2.6, and I don't understand what I did...
what happens if you try running /usr/libexec/bonobo-activation-server from the commandline or /usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon ?
Running /usr/libexec/bonobo-activation-server seems to be doing nothing. I get no error message and the program seems to exit right away. /usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon gives me a "(gnome-settings-daemon:9679): Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display:" error (9679 being the process id). I've tried running these commands before I log in from GDM, while the damn thing is stuck and after I get to Gnome by killing the bonobo-... process.
compile control-center & libbonobo with debugging info & attach gdb to the hanging process & get a backtrace.
Created attachment 42233 [details] gdb log
'with debugging info' , this backtrace is pretty useless. Add USE=debug should work. It only sais something about locales, maybe that has something todo with it.
"'with debugging info' , this backtrace is pretty useless. Add USE=debug should work." Well, that's exactly what I did. I attached gdb to bonobo-activation-server, should I use it with the gnome-control-center or gnome-settings-daemon then? My locale is set as en_EN.UTF-8 to users and as POSIX to root but this problem started before I had set the UTF-8 locale. I'm somewhat lost here, as I'm no programmer. :/
en_EN isn't valid, you should be using either en_US.UTF-8, en_GB.UTF-8, etc. check /usr/share/locale for the ones that are valid.
Whoops. I changed the locale to en_US.UTF-8 and recompiled control-center & libbonobo with USE="debug". Gnome still hangs when I log in from GDM so I used gdb to get a backtrace from gnome-settings-daemon and bonono-activation-server. I'll create attachments for the new gdb logs.
Created attachment 42249 [details] gdb backtrace of bonobo-activation-server
Created attachment 42250 [details] gdb backtrace of gnome-settings-daemon
those gdb logs still contain no information, you'll probably need to compile other packages with USE="debug", such as all the ones that own: huggins eclass $ ldd /usr/libexec/bonobo-activation-server linux-gate.so.1 => (0xffffe000) libbonobo-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libbonobo-2.so.0 (0x40033000) libbonobo-activation.so.4 => /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4 (0x4008f000) libORBitCosNaming-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libORBitCosNaming-2.so.0 (0x400a4000) libORBit-2.so.0 => /usr/lib/libORBit-2.so.0 (0x400a8000) libgobject-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgobject-2.0.so.0 (0x400fb000) libgmodule-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgmodule-2.0.so.0 (0x4013d000) libdl.so.2 => /lib/libdl.so.2 (0x40141000) libgthread-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libgthread-2.0.so.0 (0x40146000) libglib-2.0.so.0 => /usr/lib/libglib-2.0.so.0 (0x4014b000) libxml2.so.2 => /usr/lib/libxml2.so.2 (0x401d6000) libpthread.so.0 => /lib/tls/libpthread.so.0 (0x4032c000) libz.so.1 => /lib/libz.so.1 (0x4033e000) libm.so.6 => /lib/tls/libm.so.6 (0x40354000) libpopt.so.0 => /usr/lib/libpopt.so.0 (0x40378000) libc.so.6 => /lib/tls/libc.so.6 (0x40380000) /lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0x40000000)
backtraces still are useless : rebuild control-center/libbonobo/orbit & maybe some more lower level libs with CFLAGS="-g"
I just loggeg into Gnome for the first time since I last updated this bug (I've been using KDE since the problem started) and to my surprise, it didn't hang. I'm not sure what caused the problem to go away, but I've since installed the following Gnome or system related packages during normal world updates: gnome-base/gnome-vfs-2.8.1-r1 app-admin/fam-2.7.0-r2 sys-apps/util-linux-2.12b-r1 dev-libs/libxml2-2.6.15-r1 I'm pretty much lost on what caused Gnome to start working again, but it doesn't get stuck at the splash anymore.
