Observations on Gnome-2.14

[Kevin Oberman]

> Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 11:50:09 -0700
> From: "Kevin Oberman" <oberman at es.net>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-gnome at freebsd.org
> 
> > Date: Mon, 01 May 2006 13:53:24 -0400
> > From: Joe Marcus Clarke <marcus at FreeBSD.org>
> > 
> > Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > > I have one system running V6-stable that is now running Gnome-2.14. Some
> > > things are really nice about it, but there are some oddities and some
> > > things that need touching.
> > >
> > > When I first started 2.14, I got messages that several icons
> > > (gnome-calculator, logout, screen-lock) could not be found and were
> > > displayed as white icons with a red 'X'. But after acknowledging the
> > > message, all of the icons appeared and work fine. 
> > 
> > I have not seen this on any of my machines.
> > 
> > > 
> > > This might be a race as I am running i386 on an AMD dual-core 4400+
> > > Athlon-64 processor and it may be getting something done before things
> > > are ready. This is also intermittent. It happens about half the time
> > > when I start Gnome. (I use startx, not gdm.)
> > 
> > Maybe, but that seems fishy.  I guess gnome-settings-daemon could be
> > taking a long time to startup.
> 
> I suspect you are right. On my 2GHz Pentium-M system I see the
> gnome-settings-daemon come up fairly late. My terminal windows are up
> and looking ugly and then the daemon starts and they all snap to the
> correct fonts and set-ups.
> 
> Also, on two of my starts I also got the window stating that
> gnome-settings-daemon did not start. These also had the missing
> icons. But gnome-settings-daemon IS started. So this would appear to be
> the problem.
> 
> > > gnome-terminal has sometimes crashed on logout from Gnome. I have not
> > > tried to debug this at all. I do see that the contents of
> > > .gnome2/session no longer have information on all of the gnome-terminal
> > > windows. Just a simple command, so I guess gnome-terminal is storing
> > > this somewhere else. (I need to find out where to debug why at least one
> > > window never restarts.)
> > 
> > For GDM sessions, it's ~/.xsession-errors.  I thought startx would
> > output to the calling VTY.
> 
> You misunderstood the issue. I am not looking for errors (they are on
> the VTY) but the configuration information that tells gnome-terminal how
> to open windows. Things like the geometry, profile, and application, if
> any. That all used to be saved in the .gnome2/session file but now
> appears to be someplace else. There are references in .gnome2/session to
> /gnome-terminal-ev6bR2/ and I assume that this is a gconf db key or
> reference to a file. I just have not found it.
> 
> > > Sessions are a bit messed up. As already reported, all manually
> > > startup-sessions are gone after the upgrade and must be re-entered. No
> > > longer is there an ordering option, but this might be settable via the
> > > "Current Session" tab. I'll paly around with it if I get a little time.
> > > 
> > > The logout tool no longer has a check-box to save the session. I THINK I
> > > saved it by going into the "Sessions" prefs and selecting to
> > > automatically save the session on logout and logging out. I then logged
> > > back in and de-selected that option. There is still an option (which is
> > > selected) to "Ask on logout". It appears to be a no-op in 2.14, though.
> > 
> > Correct.  It looks like they axed this for 2.14.  As a workaround,
> > gnome-session-save --gui will save your current session.

It works fine! I had a totally different problem that was causing it to
hang up. It saved the session...eventually.
-- 
R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman at es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634