Re: Reinstall Gnome

[JD <jd1008 gmail com>]

On 08/30/2009 08:11 PM, John Jason Jordan wrote:
> 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.
>
>    
Well, if the apps are crashing, sounds like a code issue
in some library, or a missing library(ies).
I wish that all distros had a tool to do a full sanity check on all 
components
(packages) installed, and make sure that all dependencies arre actually 
fully
resolved.

In Fedora, yum is supposed to do that. However, all that goes out the window
if you have installed and enabled repos that are not from redhat's fedora.

So, I believe you have some badly installed or missing libs or packages.

Cheers,

JD