gnome desktop is messed up (xorg?)

Asked by Duncan Lithgow

After a recent (dist-)upgrade running ubuntu 6.10 I've got trouble with gnome. All the normal updates went fine, but update asked for permission to do a dist upgrade to update (I think) x.org. I granted that, got a whole list of what looked like small parts which would be updated and it went to work.

When I next booted into ubuntu it started with several apps which I don't remember leaving open at logoff. I've since checked those apps were not on the session startup list, they were not, and unchecked OOo's startup booster option. The same apps still start anyway, they are: terminal, ekiga, OOo (blank new ODT), firefox, and nautilus.

I first thought this might be because I accidentaly got an update from the beerorkids repo. So I've uninstalled beryl and closed that channel. But looking at all the xserver-xorg packages I can see that they're all marked -ubuntu somewhere in the package name.

The specific and very irritating problem is that none of my windows have an upper edge to their windows (isn't that how they look with beryl?) so I can't move or minimise anything.

I'd appreciate some help with this.

Duncan

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Duncan Lithgow
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Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey) said :
#1

In System --> Preferences --> Session, what do you have ticked under "Session options" and what do you have listed under "Startup programs"? Do you have metacity running under "current session"?

Have you tried re-installing the ubuntu-desktop package to make sure you have everything?

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Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow) said :
#2

Thanks for the pointers. Adding metacity (back?) to the list of startup programs has fixed the missing windows and non-functional customised shortcuts. I've _installed_ ubuntu-desktop (no idea when I uninstalled it...) but that in itself hasn't made any noticable differences.

What still puzzles me is the apps that start themselves at the beginning of each session (terminal, nautilus, ekiga and OOo). They're not in my "Session > Startup Programs" list which is:

----------
metacity
update-notifier
gnome-windows-decorator
/usr/lib/evolution/2.8/evolution-alarm-notify
gnome-power-manager
gnome-volume-manager --sm-disable
beagled
nm-applet --sm-disabled
----------

but under "Current Session" I mysteriously have "ooffice -quickstart -nologo -nodefault" and "nautilus --sm-config-prefix/nautilus-0G3915". The OOo quickstarter is definitely not activated in OOo itself - so where's that from, and is that nautilus command causing it to start with every login?

If you'd prefer I can close this and start a new support request for these remaining issues.

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Best Duncan Lithgow (duncan-lithgow) said :
#3

This was something strange in session settings - I got rid of it somehow. I guess that suggests that session settings is a bit tricky to understand.