Re: repair of gnome corruption

[Haines Brown <brownh hartford-hwp com>]

> On Sat, Apr 26, 2003 at 10:03:19AM -0400, Haines Brown wrote:
> > 
> > I'm running gnome2 (RH8.0), and gnome2 seems to fight the idea of
> > doing repairs. The gconf utility allows me to change parameters, but
> > the function of the numerous XML files in user's home directory is not
> > at all clear, and they are not conveniently edited by hand (neither is
> > necessitated merely by the use of XML). 
> 
> The XML files are just where the gconf settings are stored.  Try
> "gconftool-2 -R /" for example, to get a dump of everything in there.
> 
> What is broken? Then someone could take a guess at what you need to
> fix.

I intentionally did not specify the problems because I was looking for
pointers on where to find information on gnome(2) that would allow me
to undertake a fix. 

I find that gconftool-2 is on my system, but there's no man for
it. The -R option seems to display the configurations held in the XML
files. Again, what should I be reading that would have told me about
gconftool-2? 

> > If I restore from backup, which gnome directories should I overwrite?
> > In ~/, there are the .gnome, .gnome-desktop, .gnome2, .gnome2-private,
> > and .gnome-private directories. What is the distinction of these
> > directories, and which need to be restored from backup?
> 
> .gnome is GNOME 1.x and apps, .gnome-desktop is your desktop
> background (trash icon etc.), .gnome2 is GNOME 2 configuration,
> .gnome2-private is GNOME 2 configuration with 0700 permissions.

This information appreciated. I replaced .gconf, .gnome and .gnome2
in user's home directory from a backup, but I suppose that I wont see
the effect until I restart X or reboot. Which do I have to do?

The problems involve loss of control of the mouse (when moved, it
often acts as if I were sweeping it everywhere with the LMB depressed:
the mouse jumps to a panel, pops up multiple menus, opens and closes
files displayed in a file manager arbitrarily, the mouse locks itself
onto a scroll bar so that moving the mouse anywhere on the desktop
causes a reverse scroll, etc. A valued applet, character picker, is
dead in that I can't change the selected letters. xkbset refuses to
remember changes in its configuration.     

Haines