Startup Applications not working after upgrade to Karmic

Colin Law clanlaw at googlemail.com
Tue Feb 16 16:45:54 UTC 2010


On 16 February 2010 14:54, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
> On 15 February 2010 17:04, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> On 15 February 2010 12:56, Colin Law <clanlaw at googlemail.com> wrote:
>>> Hi
>>>
>>> I have upgraded a 9.04 desktop system to 9.10 and now entries I have
>>> added to System, Preferences, Startup Applications no longer start.
>>> These are to thunderbird and gpodder.  They work fine if I manually
>>> start them.
>>> I have looked in various log files for clues but found none.
>>>
>>> I have another 9.10 (clean install) where the startup apps work ok.
>>>
>>> Any suggestions as to what the problem may be or where to look for
>>> clues gratefully received.
>>
>> Further to this I have looked in ~/.config/autostart and find .desktop
>> files for the apps, which work as expected when I open them.  It
>> appears that for some reason the apps in autostart are not getting
>> started on logon.
>>
>> In addition I find that if I select "Automatically remember running
>> applications when logged out" and then logout with some running apps
>> they do not open when I log in again, so it appears the whole
>> autostart system is broken in some way.
>>
>> I have found a bug in launchpad that can cause changes to the startup
>> apps not to be saved, but not one that prevents them starting.
>
> Some more information, I tried purging gnome-session and re-installing
> with no effect.
>
> I created a new user and find that all works fine for the new user, so
> it is something specific to the one user.

Yet more information.  I have found the file ~/.xsession-errors
For my working user this starts off:

/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
Setting IM through im-switch for locale=en_GB.
Start IM through /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/all_ALL linked to
/etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/default.
GNOME_KEYRING_SOCKET=/tmp/keyring-3nd2gS/socket
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/keyring-3nd2gS/socket.ssh

Then goes on with messages from gnome-settings-daemon and other components.

On the failing user the above header is completely missing, the first
message is from gnome-settings-daemon.  This suggests a fundamental
problem with Xsession, but only for this user.  I probably just have
to delete a config file somewhere but I do not know what.

Colin




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