Re: gconftool-2 question

[Cyrille Moureaux <Cyrille Moureaux Sun COM>]

Hi Michal,

> I have a problem with a gnome panel crashing, because of unknown 
> reasons. The platform is FC 6 with most recent updates.
> Usually I do updates from my default user account using pup or yumex 
> after entering root password. I don't see any error messages
> in /var/log/messages indicating a problem.
>
> A message indicating problem appears in xses-errors file
> (gnome-panel:11574): Gtk-WARNING **: Could not find the icon 
> 'start-here'. The '
> hicolor' theme
> was not found either, perhaps you need to install it.
> You can get a copy from:
>         http://icon-theme.freedesktop.org/releases
>
> Deleting .gnome*, .gconf* and bunch of other files after shutting down 
> X server does not solve the problem.
It would be interesting to know more precisely where/how the gnome panel 
crashes, for instance by having a look at the stack of the process when 
it's in that state. If removing .gconf isn't helping, it's unlikely 
GConf is the main reason of the problem. The lack of the "start-here" 
icon might be the source of the crash, since if I'm not mistaken that's 
the one used for the main menu in the panel.

> At the address 
> http://www.gnome.org/learn/admin-guide/latest/gconf-28.html there is 
> command which
> suppose to restore default preference values. I am not sure whether 
> this applies to my case.
> I am not sure with what I have to replace user-configuration-source.
The user-configuration-source is the data source identifier for the user 
preferences, which are stored in $HOME/.gconf<suffix>. Have a look in 
/etc/gconf/2/path for the user source, it's likely to be the one 
starting with xml:readwrite:$(HOME)/.gconf (I can't make definitive 
statements since I'm not specifically familiar with your setup). This 
won't accomplish more than removing your $HOME/.gconf* directories 
though, so I wouldn't have much hope of it helping in your situation.

> gconftool-2 --direct --config-source 
> xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory --recursive-unset
> Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a 
> read-only configuration source at position 0
> None of the resolved addresses are writable; saving configuration 
> settings will not be possible
> Must specify one or more keys to recursively unset.
The reason the above failed is that you tried to do an unset on the data 
source containing the system mandatory settings, and that source is 
defined in the GConf path as a readonly one (from the user point of 
view). Since as seen from gconftool-2 you're trying to modify a readonly 
source, it fails (and apparently it's also expecting a starting key path 
from which to unset preferences, such as / to unset everything).

As I said, if you've removed ~/.gconf* this is probably not where the 
problem comes from, the missing icon might be a lead, otherwise knowing 
more precisely why the panel crashes would help (as would knowing why 
it's trying to use themes which don't exist and icons which aren't there).

Cyrille