Re: Lost window manager and gnome-panel
On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 09:22:51PM EST, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> On Tue, 24 Nov 2009 20:05:43 -0500
> Chris Jones <cjns1989@gmail.com> dijo:
>
> > On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 06:23:16PM EST, Rob Owens wrote:
[..] Trimming useful details re; the install - all sensible choices
I'm glad you went to the trouble of describing the process, since we
weren't looking over your shoulder.
> Then I copied over all my data files. There are no config files in any
> of my data folders.
>
> Then I modified the desktop manually. I never copied my old Gnome config
> files. Before discovering and working on the problem I didn't even know
> what the Gnome config files were. I started modifying the desktop by
> adding/removing things from the panel, and I deleted the bottom panel.
I guess, if you're curious as to what caused the problem - as opposed to
focusing on fixing it, you could try to repeat the same actions with
your test user, and bounce your gnome session at every step of the way..
see if you're able to recreate.
Maybe something went wrong when you deleted that bottom panel.
> Then I selected my favorite screensaver, and I selected the background
> that I wanted for the desktop. I had everything looking the way I
> wanted it, except for Nautilus. I tried to change the Preferences in
> Nautilus only to discover that there is a bug that causes Nautilus to
> crash if you click on Preferences. So I changed the Nautilus settings
> with gconf-editor.
That sounds rather suspicious: Just clicking on Preferences causing a
crash is something that everybody would spot right away. It's not like
some hidden option in some obscure dialog that hardly anybody uses. Did
you google or search bug reports re: this crash? May have been a fluke
that has already been corrected. All the same there's always a
possibility that this crash corrupted some resource that now prevents
metacity from taking off. Also, what do you mean by 'crashed'?
> Once I had the desktop and Nautilus configured the way I wanted I
> proceeded to install more apps. Each time I copied over the config file
> for the app, if it had one. But I only copied the config files one at a
> time.
If I understand you correctly, unless they are gnome components, this
shouldn't have any bearing on our case.
> I got to the point where I had almost everything installed and
> configured, and then I rebooted. That's when I discovered the missing
> metacity and gnome-panel.
Any particular reason you rebooted at that point - like you were
prompted to reboot for instance? Meaning, if some app prompts you to
reboot and something goes wrong after you reboot, maybe that app has
something to do with it.
> I just want to make it clear that the problem was not caused by using
> one of Gnome's config files from an Ubuntu installation.
Thanks for clarifying, although if the two gnomes are the same version,
this should not have caused any problems. And then again, it might.
> Thanks again for all the suggestions. As soon as I have time to work on
> the problem some more I'll report back, so stay tuned!
Don't forget to check the contents of ~/.xsession-errors for clues.
CJ
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