Ubuntu
gnome-panel package

after login, session does not load (no background, panel...)

Asked by SebastienBarthelemy

Hello,

My setting is somehow contrived, so I'll start with some background information.
I had 3 computers : a laptop with Karmic, a debian file server and an windows desktop computer.
I was mostly using the laptop, and the server to backup my whole laptop home directory with unison.

However, my laptop died (hardware failure), so I installed karmic on my desktop computer and shared my home from the debian server through nfs.

I expected to log in the desktop computer and to find my gnome desktop exactly as I left it on the laptop (as all the configuration files are there). However it does not work : after the login, the gnome desktop never shows up : no backgound (it keeps the one from gdm), no nautilus, no panel, nothing. However, I can move the mouse and I can hit Ctrl-Alt-F1, go to a console and kill Xorg (which sends me back to gdm). When I log using a fresh user (with a nfs-mounted home too) or my own user with the failsafe session, everything works properly. Therefore, I don't think the problem is NFS related.

It looks like gnome is waiting for something that never comes. Perhaps a setting that was meaningful for my laptop but which is not for the desktop ?

I had a look at /var/log/Xorg.log and found nothing suspect.

idem for ~/.xsession-errors.old:
    /etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
    Setting IM through im-switch for locale=fr_FR.
    Start IM through /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/all_ALL linked to /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/default.

Is there another place where I should look to gather useful info ?

I also wiped out my ~/.congig, ~/.dbus, ~/.gnome*, ~/.gconf*, ~/.xinitrc, ~/.xsession, ~/.Xsession, but have seen no change.

Is there another place where gnome-related setting may stay ?

Thank you for any help !

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Ubuntu gnome-panel Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
SebastienBarthelemy
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

You may need to chown the data so your user can access it, it may be owned by the old user so not correctly accessible on the new system

If you boot to recovery root consoie you can recursively chown the data to the user whom needs to own it and you should be a bit better off

You'll need something like:

cd /home; chown -R user_name_here:user_name_here ./user_name_here

change user_name_here for the username you use

e.g.

cd /home; chown -R andy:andy ./andy

Revision history for this message
SebastienBarthelemy (barthelemy) said : 		#2

Hello actionparsnip, and thank you for your help.

UNfortunately, this is not the problem: my user has the same uid/gid (1000) on the three computers, thus he owns the files.

Also, let's add that I don't need to use the recovery boot console, as I can log in with my user using both gdm failsafe session and the text console (Ctrl+Alt+F1). I'm currently using this very computer with failsafe gdm session.

Any other idea ?

Revision history for this message
SebastienBarthelemy (barthelemy) said : 		#3

Hello,

I removed many others config files and dirs (home/seb/.*), and it solved my problem. I don't know which one was the culprit though.

Thanks for the help !