Submited bug. Please review: User Switcher crashes on user B, user A can work only in text mode.

[sktsee]

On Wed, 12 May 2010 01:33:00 +0000, Juan R. de Silva wrote:

> I've just submitted a bug in Launchpad.
> 
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/579061
> 
> Please review it, and if anybody knows how to get out of situation
> without a complete re-install, I would appreciate your help.
> 

>From what you wrote in your bug report, user B has no issues when logging 
in, correct? If that's the case, then it's not necessary to re-install 
anything because the problem is not with the system, but something within 
user A's configuration, which means it's highly likely that it's local to 
his home directory. The most drastic measure you should have to take is 
to remove/rename some configuration related directories that will reset 
user A's program settings back to their defaults once he logs out and 
back in again.

Gnome app configs and data are stored in legacy and newer freedesktop.org 
specified directories:

~/.gnome
~/.gnome2
~/.config
~/.cache
~/.local

Apps that use gconf managed settings store them in 

~/.gconf
~/.gconfd

And then apps may store some of their settings within their own 
directories, i.e. evolution in ~/.evolution.

Probably missed a few, but generally those are places to look in when 
trying to troubleshoot certain problems with non-starting or crashing 
apps.

If you want to try a few shot in the dark solutions, do the following in 
a vt before logging in to a Gnome session. Try logging in after doing 
each one. 

1. Delete ~/.gconfd/saved_state

2. Rename ~/.gconf/apps/panel to ~/.gconf/apps/panel-backup. This will 
cause your panels and panel objects settings to be reset to their 
installation defaults upon login.

3. If the above doesn't work, then rename ~/.gconf to ~/.gconf-backup. 
This resets everything gconf-wise to installation defaults. 

4. Check file perms for configs. Use find to see if any config files are 
owned by root, or user B. 

$ cd ~
$ find . ! -user <user A's username>
Any config file or directory (those starting with ".") found and not 
owned by user A should be examined.

If none of the above work, then login as user A and then switch out to a 
vt and examine ~/.xession-errors file. Hopefully, there will be some 
indication in that file to help narrow down where the problem lies. Post 
any relevant error messages in that file to the list and go from there.

-- 
sktsee