Re: Reinstall Gnome

[John Jason Jordan <johnxj comcast net>]

On Sat, 29 Aug 2009 19:59:14 -0700
JD <jd1008 gmail com> dijo:

> On 08/29/2009 07:44 PM, John Jason Jordan wrote:I have Jaunty x86_64 on a Thinkpad T61. Jaunty is fully up to date, all
> updates are applied.
> 
> Everything has always been rock solid until about 4 weeks ago. However,
> suspend has never worked satisfactorily - I can go into suspend, but
> cannot restore. Knowing this, I ignored it. I don't really need suspend
> anyway. But about 4 weeks ago I tried it again for the first time in
> months. Sure enough, I could not restore. So I used the power button
> and restarted, because that was my only option.
> 
> When Ubuntu came back up my bluetooth mouse was not working. I tried
> everything but could not get it to work. However, bluetooth was working
> because I could connect to my phone. And hcitool found the mouse, and
> the cc switch executed without error. A local Linux guru suggested that
> if bluetooth was working but the mouse was not, then the problem had to
> be in X. That made sense, so I switched from the nv driver to the
> proprietary nVidia driver and rebooted. When Ubuntu came back up the
> mouse was working.
> 
> The mouse continued to work until a couple days ago when it quit again.
> Switching video drivers did not repair the problem. 
> 
> I now suspect that something is messed up in Gnome. I say this because:
> 
> 1) My desktop font (Sans 9 pt) is messed up - some numerals appear in a
> slightly smaller point size. And the line spacing is too wide. And if I
> type something in a dialog box the text jumps down so the bottom half
> of the letters is hidden. 
> 
> 2) I am getting crashes in Firefox and other applications several times
> a day. The Firefox crashes occur when clicking on a link or entering a
> search string in a Google dialog box. Other applications crash at
> random - that is, I cannot figure out a pattern.
> 
> 3) The computer is locking up about once every couple of days. Twice it
> happened when typing text into a Google search box; other times it has
> happened randomly - I cannot see any pattern.
> 
> I should add that reinstalling Jaunty is not a good option. I have many
> programs installed that took a lot of tweaking to get them to work,
> tweaks which I don't even remember. These are specialized applications
> for use in linguistics. Yes, some day I will buy a new computer and
> probably do a fresh install. I just want to avoid it if at all possible.
> 
> It may not be Gnome, but I need a clear acquittal because at this point
> Gnome is my top suspect. I want to reinstall Gnome, but I cannot figure
> out how to do so. I'm sure Gnome consists of several modules, but what
> are they? And what will happen if I try to do it when the GUI is
> running? Should I do it from the command line in Recovery Mode?
> 
> Thanks in advance for answers and any other suggestions and advice.


>    Hi John,
> I have one small suggestion.
> 
> Can you use the user management gui to create a new user
> and login as that user. Se eif the mouse works.
> If so, the problem may be in your settings in these dirs:
> .gnome/
> .gnome2/
> .gnome2_private/
> 
> I do not know which one.

As it turns out I already had an alternate user that I set up a long
time ago. I created the user account so I would have some way to log in
in case something happened to my own login account.

I rebooted completely, then logged in as my alternate user. The desktop
fonts were still messed up. And typing something in a Google search box
in Firefox would crash Firefox or lock up the computer, just as it does
for me.

I have also switched to other fonts in System > Preferences >
Appearance. They all display with the same weirdness as Sans that I was
using before, and I can still lock up the computer or crash Firefox.

Note that Firefox is not the only app that crashes. I have other apps
crash and/or lock up the computer as well. I use Firefox as an example
because typing something in a Google search box will do it about one
time out of ten. 

The computer has nVidia Quadro 140M video, and I have switched to/from
the open source and the proprietary drivers, but it makes no difference.

I also installed kubuntu-desktop, rebooted, and logged into KDE. Same
problems. Therefore, I conclude that the problem is not specifically in
Gnome. It must have something to do with screen display, but I can't
figure out what.

Thanks for the suggestion.