Re: Why oh why is Gnome eating my panel! (Frustration == MAX)

[Tom Gilbert <gilbertt tomgilbert freeserve co uk>]

* Stan Brown (stanb@awod.com) wrote:
> 	I am just about rady to throw in the towel, and try a different
> 	aproach.
> 
> 	I started a couple of weeks ago with a clean Redhat 6.0 install to
> 	configure a machine for a bunch of novice users. I wanted to set up a
> 	nice defaul Gnome environemt for them.

I think one of the difficulties with this "mass production" is that
some areas of Gnome are still immature, and therefor change often. As
things settle, features to aid taks such as this will _definitely_ be
added, they are obviously a feature that cannot be ommited.

You can already go a fairly long way by editing
$prefix/share/gnome/default.session, and using the directory /etc/skel
to specify default files to provide to new users as you create them.

A graphical tool for saving session states and sharing them without
conflicts will be very useful, and I hope to write one when I finish
my current project, but that may be a little while off.

> 	I went trhough and did all the setups by hand. Then I found Gnome would
> 	misplace the panel. Without it you can't even log out cleanly.
> 
> 	I appealed to this list and it was sugested that I install Redhat;s
> 	update rpm's for all the Gnome related stuff. 
> 
> 	The I atempeted to mass produce an envrionment for these suers. I never
> 	did get this quite right, so finally I have up, created new user ID;s
> 	for these folks, and satrted over tonite to create the environments one
> 	by one by hand. Well at this point i have created 3, and 2 of these
> 	users have lost the panel again!
> 
> 	Needless to say I am frustrated. 
> 
> 	The only clue I have is that both of the users who have lost the panel
> 	have a core in there home directories, it's from the cdplayer aplet.

This is a red herring I'm afraid. Applications using gtk+ 1.2.3 (and lower)
dump core when they lose their connection to X. This happened when you
closed X after losing the panel. What actually happened is that all your
applets dumped core.
The cdplayer applet just did it _last_.
This is not where the problem is coming from.

<OT> When will they 'invent' timestamped or named core files to prevent
these problems? </OT>

> 	Is this a clue, Can I posible recover these users without having to
> 	start over for the 3rd time!
> 
> 	And finally, is this stuff just not stbale enough for production use?
> 	Should I look at altenatives?

I had the "losing the panel" problems for some time, but the latest
gnome-core and -libs have solved this for me. I use cvs gnome, but
installing the latest rpms from gurulabs will be a very good thing for
you I think. Upgrade everything from there, and see how you go...

> 	Please can anyone provide some help here, I am pulling my hair out!

We're here to help. Reporting bugs is _good_. Keep it up.

I also posted a tip a while back to automatically save gnome's state
on startup (a moderately crude hack, but it _does_ work).

I no-longer need it myself, as Gnome is really stable for me these
days, but it went something like this...

-------------------
In your ~/.xinitrc (if you use startx to start x), before you exec
gnome-session include the lines...

cd ~/
rm -rf ~/.gnome_backup
cp -R ~/.gnome ~/.gnome_backup

That's it. Everytime you run X, gnome's settings are dumped to a
backup directory. If you lose your panel, and don't want to
reconfigure all you applets, leave X, and do
rm -rf ~/.gnome
cp -R ~/.gnome_backup ~/.gnome

This will restore gnome to the state it was in before you just ran it.
You will obviously lose any changes you made to the session, but it
will save you recreating your environment.

Obviously, if you start gnome again without doing this, your broken
settings will then be backed up over your old working ones.

If you had a ton of diskspace, you could even store two or three
copies, and rotate them, removing the oldest one each time you start.
I don't think this is really necessary though.
-------------------

I hate to see all these post where people recommend the rm -rf
~/.gnome 'trick'. This is the wanton destruction of data, and I'd much
rather restore a backup than waste my settings twice a week! ;)

<OT>
I associate people who regularly rm -rf ~/.gnome to fix something with
people who run MS Windows and reinstall the whole OS every time they
lose a dll. :(
</OT>

Tom.
-- 
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    .^.     | Tom Gilbert, England | tom@tomgilbert.freeserve.co.uk |
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