Gnome FC5 Error

[Rick Stevens]

On Tue, 2006-05-02 at 16:58 -0600, karlp at ourldsfamily.com wrote:
> On Tue, May 2, 2006 11:26 am, Rick Stevens said:
> > On Mon, 2006-05-01 at 21:44 -0600, karlp at ourldsfamily.com wrote:
> > <major snippage...this is getting really long>
> >> >> > That's really not normal.  The last time I saw that sort of error was
> >> >> > when the user's ~/.gnome* directories got whacked.
> >> >>
> >> >> I started having problems with the KDE panels, plus the background image
> >> >> wouldn't change. I removed kdesktoprc and that solved both issues.
> >> >
> >> > Both the gnome-terminal and the KDE panels?
> >>
> >> No, apparently the panel problem persists. I'm able to run gnome-terminal
> >> without a hitch in KDE, but the KDE panels are locked up. No text-tips, no
> >> highlighting when mouse-over happens, nothing... It's pretty unstable right
> >> now... Other issues have popped up I'll have to document later and see how
> >> things go for solutions.
> >
> > Hmmmm.  This is fully updated, right?
> 
> I've manually run yum update just about every day. I have some extra
> repositories now that I didn't used to. I've added greysector from the start
> so I can install mplayer using yum. I wonder if it's broken things... I
> haven't seen any of the updates use greysector, however, but haven't watched
> as closely as I might have been had I suspected it. I added livna and
> freshrpms, too, a day or so ago. Mplayer still doesn't work completely as well
> as it did on FC4...

The ATI driver you installed...did you do it via ATI's stuff or via the
livna RPM repository?  I just use the livna one on the laptop and it's
pretty nice.  "yum --enable-repo kmod-fglrx"

> 
> >
> >> >> >> I'm wondering if this is why gnome-panel dies, too, after
> >> gnome-terminal
> >> >> >> fails to come up. I've CTRL-ALT F1 and logged in as root and killed
> >> >> >> gnome-panel with no success. It starts back up, as it should, but
> >> >> >> doesn't get displayed in X.
> >> >> >
> >> >> > Probably.
> >> >>
> >> >> I'll give gnome a re-try after removing .gnome2 (?) Could gconf.d have
> >> any
> >> >> issues?
> >> >
> >> > Well, it could if you saved a weird session.  Try deleting the
> >> > ~/.gconfd/saved-state file for the user in question, log in as that user
> >> > and save the session.
> >>
> >> I'm the only user on this system. You know, I shouldn't have to remove that
> >> file, except that gnome auto-saves and I can't find an option to check to
> >> undo
> >> that 'feature'... I'm bugged with gnome in that it's no where near as
> >> customizable as it used to be.
> >
> > You should squawk it to the Gnome people.  They've already changed a
> > number of things due to complaints.  Gnome's just as customizable as it
> > ever was, there just isn't the super-simple GUI stuff to do it anymore.
> > However, to turn automatic session save off, go to
> >
> > System->Preferences->More Preferences->Sessions
> >
> > Uncheck "Automatically save changes to sessions" and check "Ask on
> > logout".
> 
> That would be good, except the panel doesn't stay up long enough to get into
> it... It's down within about 5 minutes in a session.

Ok, that's really sucky.

<snip>

> >> The issue is knowing which term I'm using when I ssh or telnet to an AIX
> >> server at work. That's the rub... Our business app, a very fast, clean
> >> green-screen app, uses smoke and mirrors to look a bit 'windowy' with line
> >> characters, etc. Since it's not ncurses, the emulation has to be exact.
> >> We've
> >> been WY50 for centuries (okay, not that long) and I made the switch to
> >> 'vt100/ansi' like emulators, and I had to twiddle around with the termtype
> >> settings to get xterms to work in a DBMS-specific terminal type.
> >
> > Ah.  Well, if you're in gnome-terminal, there is an environment
> > variable, $COLORTERM that's set.  In other words, in just an xterm,
> > $TERM will be set to "xterm" and $COLORTERM won't be defined.  In gnome-
> > terminal, $TERM will be "xterm" and $COLORTERM will be "gnome-terminal".
> >
> 
> Those variables aren't passed to the AIX server....

Well, that's true.

<snip>
> > Once the stability checks are done on the Athlon, I'll get to work on
> > the dual-head nature of the beast (the nVidia chipset supports it).  My
> > laptop's ATI chipset says it supports dual head, but I'm not sure I
> > believe it...there's the external monitor port on the back, but I think
> > it simply mirrors what's on the main screen when it's enabled.  Worth a
> > try, I guess.
> >
> 
> It should work fine on the laptop. I'm beginning to think the reason it
> doesn't work on my desktop is because the second monitor I have is an Envision
> and FC doesn't know anything about it, even though ddcprobe does give me the
> Hsync and Vsync values.

In this case, the external thing just seems to mirror the main display.
I haven't played with it too much yet, though.

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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-         We have enough youth, how about a fountain of SMART?       -
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