Re: Gnome-panel freezes

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Tue, Aug 08, 2000 at 03:00:42PM +0200 or thereabouts, Pär Ekholm wrote:
> I have a problem with the panel freezes anytime. It just happens. I
> haven`t done anything. I have the latest helix-gnome on a RHL 6.2  with
> kernel 2.2.16. At the time i write this the panel has freeze five or
> more times. And then occasionally it melt up again and then after a
> short time freezes again. But i must say that the desktop work. I can
> launch applications.To do so i right-click on the desktop and open the
> terminal. But the panel on the bottom and on the top are like ice. What
> should i do? Have anyone the same problem?  Pär.

I've had vaguely similar problems in the past. Have you added any applets 
to the panel? I found that starting gnome-weather when my network 
connection was flaky would hang things wonderfully until gnome-weather 
either  established its connection to where it gets its data or gave up
trying. There may be other applets which do the same kind of thing.

I believe you can nuke the panel and it will restart itself:  'killall 
panel' (gosh, I seem to be suggesting killall a lot today, I must be 
feeling vindinctive towards computers..) might work. Finding out 
whether it's the panel or one of the applets in it might be better 
in the long run. Using 'top' in a terminal or starting the graphical 
version by typing 'gtop' will give you a bunch of information about 
what's running currently and what's eating CPU. I can't think what 
would be a useful thing to look for, though. Things which have a 
'D' under 'stat' (State) for a long period of time aren't always 
good news; and something chewing your CPU (80-90+% for ages) can 
cause things to jam up a lot. Perhaps someone can offer better ways 
to diagnose this. (I don't use Helix and haven't met this: I just
met gweather being silly. (One of the funkier effects of that was
that I clicked madly on it, tried to remove it, move it and so on,
and none of the mouse clicks had any effect. Then suddenly they all
took effect about five minutes later and the applet whizzed madly
around the panel (my attempts to move it) and kept flicking its
menu up and down (my attempts to remove it). It was actually rather
funny once I realised what was happening.)

Telsa