Ubuntu
gnome-panel package

Gnome hangs just before displaying panels -- upgrade issue?

Asked by RM

Hi,

I'm using 10.4 on a Dell Dimension E521. A few days ago I did a system update, which required a reboot. Since doing that, there has been some strange behavior. (Please bear with me -- Linux newbie.)

* When I boot into my usual admin account, gnome hangs, after displaying my custom screen background image, but before displaying any panels. That is the basic problem.
* I am able to move the cursor around with the mouse, but I can't do much else in Gnome.
* I was able to do Ctrl-Alt-F1 and get to the command prompt. But I was unsure what to do from there (eg how to disable custom panels, how to undo the latest update, how to check gnome version).
* When I boot into a different non-admin account which has never been customized, gnome seems to work fine and I see panels with menus, clock, shutdown options, "taskbar," etc. (presumably the default panels). That account does not have permission to read the external drive, and I am unsure exactly how to give it that permission.
* There is an external hard drive that I usually mount on startup and share on the network, and I see that at least one directory on it has been corrupted.
* I don't know for sure whether the panels are blame, it is an issue with administration, the problem lies with mounting the external drive, or something else is going on.
* I booted from a live cd of 10.4 and I was able to see gnome running there as well.
* In the past, trying to run kde has thrown lots of errors, so while I could go that route for diagnostic purposes, I don't know if it will tell me much more.

This may be the same issue as http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=351439 but to my knowledge I don't use gentoo, I am unfamiliar with bonobo, I don't know how to check what version of gnome I am running without running synaptic package manager (which to my knowledge would require a working gnome), and I am a little confused about how they resolved that bug. There is supposedly some upgrade guide, but no link to it?

Any assistance here would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Ubuntu gnome-panel Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
RM
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#1

Please tell what mean with your usual admin account (i hope you are not log in as root)... ?

Revision history for this message
RM (rmajeed) said : 		#2

> Please tell what mean with your usual admin account (i hope you are not log in as root)... ?

I don't believe this is the root account.... It is an account that I use for adding/removing user accounts, changing machine-wide settings, etc. but I have to sudo in order to do anything really interesting. It is also not called root, though I admit that I don't know whether the root account can be renamed.

It was a while ago, but I think that when installing or first running Ubuntu I was asked to make a new account, and this was it. I could be wrong on that though.

The account in question appears to auto-login when I boot the machine.... I don't boot very often (very cool thing about Linux I must say) so I didn't realize that until recently. I'd like to know how to turn that auto-login off, if only because it would make troubleshooting this issue easier.

Revision history for this message
marcobra (Marco Braida) (marcobra) said : 		#3

Try this: FAQ #1163 https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-panel/+question/114041

Revision history for this message
RM (rmajeed) said : 		#4

Yes, method B worked for me. Thanks Marco! I'm concerned that the cause is still unknown, and it did nuke my custom panels (which I guessed would happen from the commands), but at least gnome is usable again.