Lost session

[Colin Law]

On 15 December 2010 16:22, rikona <rikona at sonic.net> wrote:
> I use both Opera and FF, with many windows and tabs open in each.
> Opera tends to get flakey [display starts to do odd things] with many
> windows/tabs open, and eventually crashes with additional loading. In
> the past, with Mandriva, I would switch to another user and could
> again load up Opera and FF with lots of stuff in multiple users. It
> was easy to switch users, so that worked well as a way of 'extending'
> the browsers without problems. This is also nice since I can run the
> browsers with very different privacy/security modes.
>
> I tried this in UB - set up a new user, B, switched to it, and opened
> Opera. Since this was an 'extension' of Opera, I switched back to user
> A to see what I wanted to 'extend'. BUT - when I switched back to user
> A, it didn't 'switch', but gave me a new login screen just as one
> would have at the beginning. Since I was, at that point, unfamiliar
> with switching in UB, I logged in as user A - but the original session
> was gone and I lost everything that was running before the switch
> [resulting in lots of cursing :-) ]. During this switch, there was a
> very brief text message re changing something related to desktop, but
> it went by so fast I could not read it.
>
> I tried a test switch to/from user B, and this time I got a different
> 'login' screen asking for the PW for the user I was switching to,
> which was NOT what I got before. At this point switching seemed to
> work OK. I ran an update at this point since nothing important was
> running and I could do the needed restart easily.
>
> Two questions re the failed switch:
>
> (1) Could the failure be caused by the fact that I had just created
> user B just before the switch?

You could try making another user again and see if it is repeatable,
if so then report it as a bug.

>
> (2) Might it be because user A had the box VERY loaded - all desktops
> running many apps, all memory used, and almost all swap space used too
> - and it was 'too big' to switch successfully?

Are you saying that you _had_ used up all the memory and swap?  If so
then you need to get more memory.

>
> Any idea what that too-brief msg might have been during the failed
> switch? I can't reproduce it with two lightly loaded users. Is there a
> way to track it down [it was before a restart and several test
> switches]?
>
> or perhaps some reason 3?

There have been bugs in this area that have caused logout on switching
user (which I think that is what you are saying happened).  I know
that one that has affected me has been fixed (on 10.04, I don't think
you have told us which version you are using).  Have a look on
launchpad (https://launchpad.net/+search) to see if there are any that
look likely to be your issue.

>
> I would like to know so this does NOT happen again - I lost a LOT of
> work when the session was lost. All insights much appreciated...

I hope you mean setup work rather than unsaved edits and so on.

Colin