Weird GNOME behaviour (in Dapper and Edgy)

[Severin Schoepke]

Hi list,

I recently got that problem below again:


> On 11/19/06, *Severin Schoepke* <severin.schoepke at gmail.com 
> <mailto:severin.schoepke at gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>     Hi list!
>
>     I decided to switch from Windows with the Dapper release. I
>     installed it
>     and all went well. But because it was my first Linux installation
>     that I
>     used for daily work, I messed around and tried lots of stuff, which
>     maybe introduced damage... When Edgy was released, I reformatted
>     the HD
>     and did a clean install of Edgy. I tried to keep this installation
>     clean
>     (only using official repos, no EasyUbuntu, no Automatix and so on).
>
>     But I have a weird problem with both installations: Sometimes Gnome
>     doesn't allow the creation of new windows: When I'm working and
>     want to
>     start a new app or open a folder, it happens from time to time
>     that the
>     app/folder is not started/opened. There's a new entry in the task
>     bar in
>     the likes of 'Mozilla Firefox wird gestartet...' (FF is being
>     started in
>     english) that just disappears after a few seconds. I then can't start
>     applications, be it via the start menu, a panel launcher, a starter on
>     the desktop or from a terminal that is already open... Then suddenly,
>     after 10 minutes or so, the apps finally start/the windows get
>     opened...
>
>     This is really annoying, and a fix for it is to Ctrl-Alt-Backspace and
>     restart X... And I find it strange that noone else reported this
>     problem, I can't believe I'm the only one suffering from this...
>
>     As I said it happenend on both installations (the probably messed up
>     Dapper and the clean Edgy)... I use a Dell Inspirion laptop with 512
>     megs RAM and with a GeForce FX5200. The binary drivers
>     (nvidia-glx) from
>     the official repo are installed. Most of the time I have quite a few
>     apps running (Thunderbird, Gaim, Rythmbox, Tomboy and a Terminal).
>     And I
>     usually don't shut down the computer but use hibernation instead...
>
>     I have no idea where the problem lies: I suspect it could be a X
>     problem, or a window manager problem or maybe a memory problem. But
>     normally everything is working (X and the window manager make no
>     problems other than that) and 512 megs of RAM is not much, but it
>     should
>     be enough and the RAM is fine (I memtested it)...
>
>     Does anyone have an idea where the problem lies or how to fix it?
>
>     TIA!
>
>     cheers, Severin
>
>


But now I found a new indcation: Everytime this happens, there's a line like

Jan 27 12:00:44 selle -- MARK --

in the syslog... Does anyone know which program/daemon/service is 
printing this line? Maybe this app is the source of all evil?



cheers, Severin