enabling a single gnome shell extension breaks the system

[Pavlos Parissis <pavlos parissis gmail com>]

Hi,

I will try to describe the situation I am in as simple as possible.

On 29th of February the following packages were upgraded on my Ubuntu
11.10 system
upgrade libxml2 2.7.8.dfsg-4ubuntu0.1 2.7.8.dfsg-4ubuntu0.2
upgrade file-roller 3.2.1-0ubuntu1 3.2.1-0ubuntu2
triggers-pending gconf2 3.2.3-0ubuntu0.1
libglib2.0-0:i386 2.30.0-0ubuntu4
triggers-pending man-db 2.6.0.2-2
triggers-pending desktop-file-utils 0.18-0ubuntu9
triggers-pending gnome-menus 3.2.0-0ubuntu2
hicolor-icon-theme 0.12-1ubuntu1
upgrade gnome-shell 3.2.1-0ubuntu1.1 3.2.2.1-0ubuntu0.1
install gnome-shell-common <none> 3.2.2.1-0ubuntu0.1
upgrade python-httplib2 0.7.1-1ubuntu1 0.7.2-1ubuntu2~0.11.10.1
upgrade python-libxml2 2.7.8.dfsg-4ubuntu0.1 2.7.8.dfsg-4ubuntu0.2

After the 1st restart I noticed that CoverflowAltTab extensions was
not working and was not even listed in the gnome-tweek tool. I tried
to re-installed but didn´t help. I found out that that this extension
is not compatible with gnome-shell 3.2.2.

Because I real like this extension I decided to roll back the upgrade
by installing the previous version of gnome-shell. On the first login
gnome-shell crashed and I was left with no usable desktop.

I said let's clean .config and .local/share/gnome-shell/extensions.
After that I was able to login without issues.
But every time I was enabling few of the following extensions I was
having the same problem
dpkg -l|grep gnome-shell-ext|awk '{print $2}'
gnome-shell-extensions-alternate-tab
gnome-shell-extensions-alternative-status-menu
gnome-shell-extensions-apps-menu
gnome-shell-extensions-auto-move-windows
gnome-shell-extensions-common
gnome-shell-extensions-dock
gnome-shell-extensions-drive-menu
gnome-shell-extensions-gajim
gnome-shell-extensions-native-window-placement
gnome-shell-extensions-places-menu
gnome-shell-extensions-system-monitor
gnome-shell-extensions-user-theme
gnome-shell-extensions-windows-navigator
gnome-shell-extensions-workspace-indicator
gnome-shell-extensions-xrandr-indicator

the problem doesn't occur with a specific extension.

I created another user in order to see if it is my config but the same
behaviour occurred.

I found out that I can recover from that situation my removing
./.config/dconf/user. But with this I lose all my desktop
configuration.

Since it was a not a user conf I reinstalled all gnome-shell packages
but again the same issue.
So even with latest gnome-shell (3.2.2 ) and clean conf my gnome-shell
breaks after randomly enabling few extensions. That it was not
happening before 29th Feb.

What could be possible causing this? What is outside of my home
directory which can lead to this situation?

The errors i see on .xsession-errors after enabling a extension and
restarting shell by alt-f2 and r are the following
** Message: applet now removed from the notification area
gnome-shell-calendar-server[1911]: Got HUP on stdin - exiting
gnome-session[1732]: WARNING: Application 'gnome-shell.desktop' killed by signal
JS LOG: GNOME Shell started at Fri Mar 02 2012 08:44:25 GMT+0100 (CET)
** Message: applet now embedded in the notification area

(gnome-shell:3662): folks-WARNING **: Error preparing persona store
'eds:1330250713.18759.0@pparissis-MacBookPro': Couldn't open address
book ‘1330250713.18759.0@pparissis-MacBookPro’: Cannot open book:
Cannot process, book backend is opening

(gnome-shell:3662): Clutter-CRITICAL **: clutter_text_get_editable:
assertion `CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed

(gnome-shell:3662): Clutter-CRITICAL **: clutter_text_get_text:
assertion `CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed

(gnome-shell:3662): Clutter-CRITICAL **: clutter_text_set_text:
assertion `CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed

St-ERROR **: st_widget_get_theme_node called on the widget [0x35979d0
StButton.status-chooser-user-icon] which is not in the stage.
** Message: applet now removed from the notification area
gnome-shell-calendar-server[3671]: Got HUP on stdin - exiting
gnome-session[1732]: WARNING: Application 'gnome-shell.desktop' killed by signal
gnome-session[1732]: WARNING: App 'gnome-shell.desktop' respawning too quickly
gnome-session[1732]: CRITICAL: We failed, but the fail whale is dead. Sorry....
[Notify 08:44:27.978] Docky - Docky requires compositing to work
properly. Certain options are disabled and themes/animations will look
incorrect.

Thanks,
Pavlos