Re: Searching for help on error msgs from gnome environment apps

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

On Wed, Dec 17, 2003 at 06:01:03AM -0500 or thereabouts, Larry W. Virden wrote:
> 
> I see a variety of error msgs during a day running the GNOME environment;
> does anyone maintain a database of errors and solutions/workarounds/
> reasons?

I know a couple, just from asking around, and from knowing typical
Linux errors and seeing other errors asked about before.  

The big distinction I know of is between "Foo warning" and "Foo error".
Warning seems to be in the "just letting you know, but I can continue
on regardless" category. Errors mean something is not going to work.

Gtk distinguishes between warnings, errors and "critical". I don't
know the distinction between the latter two. Gdk, which you'll see
in some of them, is part of Gtk as far as I know. 

Log levels are like debugging levels: you can get more or less
detail from them. 

> Window manager warning: Log level 32: could not find XKB extension.

Nice. XKB extension is part of XFree86, isn't it? Are you using
XFree86? Or are you using Solaris? I saw some Solaris questions
from you the other day, I think.  Solaris uses its own X server, 
doesn't it? With some Sun extensions? Does it provide this XKB thing?

I don't _know_, but I suspect it doesn't. Because the only thing
I know about XKB is that it is what provides "move the pointer
with the keyboard" utility. Erm, well. I think it does, anyway :) 
And I am not sure that XKB comes in Solaris' X server. I have a
vague idea that the Solaris one has the same functionality, but
it's provided by something different.

Since the last time I used X on a Sun box was when it was still
SunOS and not Solaris, most of the above is based on half-remembered
comments from IRC and mailing lists to which I didn't pay much
attention as they didn't affect me. But it's a thought.

> ** (gnome-panel:27036): WARNING **: Unable to load panel stock icon 'go'

As it says: looking for a stock (shipped with Gnome) icon. Do you
get a missing icon when this happens? I suppose I would go and
poke around /usr/share/icons or whatever path contains the icons
used by Gnome looking for an icon with a name like 'go' and see 
whether (a) any such thing existed, (b) the permissions were right, 
(c) the image was somehow corrupt..?

On Linux, if the image was there and I really wanted to know what
was going wrong, I might try to use the "strace" command to see
absolutely everything which happened. I think the equivalent on
Solaris is "truss" (?). However, I'm not sure how I would strace
the panel: perhaps I'd have to kill it and restart it in order to
get the relevant stuff to show up. 

> Gnome-Message: gnome_execute_async_with_env_fds: returning -1

I don't know what produces "Gnome-Message" at all. 

> sh: xscreensaver-getimage: not found

A script started, went to run xscreensaver-getimage, and couldn't
find it. But you knew that :) 

xscreensaver-getimage is the thing that grabs an image of the
desktop in order for a screensaver to mutate it, turn it into
a jigsaw, and all the other things it does to it. And it comes
with the package xscreensaver. So I presume that either you
do not have xscreensaver installed (which sounds unlikely, as
(a) I think it's required for Gnome; and (b) you have more
xscreensaver errors below), or that its binaries are not on the 
path of whichever user got this error.

On my Linux box, it lives in /usr/X11R6/bin but I am not
sure that this will be the same on Solaris? 

Oh. Another thought. I have encountered some people who don't
like having their desktop visible (whether as a jigsaw or not)
when they are away from their terminal and disable those screensavers
which use the image of the desktop from running. I don't know
how they do that. I suppose a quick and dirty way is to remove
the binary that takes the picture :) 

> Window manager warning: Log level 16: gtk_icon_size_register_alias: Icon size 7 does not exist
> Window manager warning: Tried to ping a window with CurrentTime! Not allowed.
> Window manager warning: Property _NET_WM_NAME on window 0xa80001e contained invalid UTF-8

Don't know for these. I don't even know which window manager says
"Window manager warning" instead of "'Name of wm' warning". Metacity?

Again, as warnings, I'd ignore them. :) Or bugzilla them and 
expect them to be left untouched until all the bugs involving
"error" rather than "warning" are sorted.

> (gnome-panel:27036): Wnck-WARNING **: Property _NET_WM_NAME contained invalid UTF-8

I presume this happened at the same time as that immediately before it.
Some naughty application is forming invalid UTF-8 sequences and feeding
it on to something else, perhaps? Hence the window manager which
handles the window is complaining about it and whatever pager or tasklist 
is using libwnck and thus presumably also doing stuff involving the 
window is complaining as well? 

> xscreensaver: 05:47:52: PAM: brk grew by 8K.

I know what xscreensaver is and does and I know what PAM is and does,
but I have no idea at all on this one!

> (xscreensaver-lock:27566): Gdk-WARNING **: GdkWindow 0x9400028 unexpectedly destroyed

If it weren't for the xscreensaver at the start of this, I'd think
this is what happens when you kill a window in an unusual way and
an app goes to try to draw in it. Sorry, dunno this one either!

> Key /apps/panel/profiles/default/objects/1t1071232571ut894425u203p24481r3195k4290690836/launcher_location is not set, can't load launcher

I associate "key" in Gnome with GConf, and the fact that this thing
which looks like a path starts with something which is definitely
not usually in the / directory confirms it to me. I opened 
gconf-editor and ignored the "Warning, you can do bad things with
this!" dialogue. Picking /apps/panel/profiles/default/objects takes 
me to a bunch of files. I poked around through them looking at the
contents. Several have "launcher_location" keys. Interestingly,
the value of the key varies wildly around these kinds of things:

  applications:///Internet/redhat-email.desktop
  applications:///gnome-yelp.desktop
  hammer-(longrandomnumber).desktop
  curly-{longrandomnumber).desktop

(Hammer? Curly? What is this? Are these perhaps launchers which I
set up which are not normally on the panel? Or what?) 

But perhaps it thinks there is a launcher for the panel which it
can't make, because it doesn't know where the .desktop file which
tells it how to launch it is?

So this isn't much help, really, but I post in the hope that someone
will read it, say "No, no, that's all wrong" and reply to explain
better!

As to your original question which I see re-reading your mail
(sorry!): I don't know of any list of errors and what they really
mean and what to do about them. I have occasionally thought about
creating myself such a list, as I am sure it would be useful.
Really, my "error message database" is "type it into Google and
see what I get". This has very variable results: from absolutely
what I needed to worse than useless.

Telsa