Lost session

[rikona]

Hello Colin,

Wednesday, December 15, 2010, 8:53:39 AM, Colin wrote:

CL> 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?

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

Good suggestion. I just tried it and it worked OK, but none of the
other two users was loaded heavily. Looks like this might not be the
problem.

Another idea occurred to me. For the original failure, I had a rather
long up time, including a number of non-restart updates, system/config
changes, open/closes, net stuff, etc. Something in this list might
also have contributed to the problem, but would be near impossible to
reproduce it.

>>
>> (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?

CL> Are you saying that you _had_ used up all the memory and swap?

Almost. I have learned to not get too close to using up swap, as it
starts to slow the system considerably. At that point, I
complete/close/save/end things to free up swap/memory.

CL> If so then you need to get more memory.

It seems as though the way I work, leaving many uncompleted activities
running, always fills up all the installed memory/swap. :-) If I get
more, then I do more. If I could afford 50 Gigs of memory, and the box
could use it, perhaps that might be OK. :-)

>>
>> 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?

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

I'll check it out.

>>
>> 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...

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

Unfortunately, it was all of the above, including one large doc with
dozens of references/quotes from perhaps 50 web sites - that's what
caused most of the cursing. I guess I'm used to rather high
reliability, and don't do saves often enough. Didn't occur to me that
I'd need to do that before the switch. 

Thanks for the reply,

 rikona