program launcher going wild

[Amedee Van Gasse]

On 29/06/2012 17:43, Gene Heskett wrote:
> A more kerosene on the fire PS:
>
> Its done that 4 more times since I posted the above, and each time I
> reboot, things change.  Once I even got the default users gui setup which I
> was unable to change.  No keyboard response to even open a terminal screen.
>
> When I reboot, long before the login screen appears, I get an error
> advisory popup, center screen, that says it "Could not update
> /var/lib/gdm/.ICEauthority"
>
> If I sit and wait long enough I will finally get the big Xservers X mouse
> pointer so I can click on the close button.  Eventually.
>
> The instant I close that, it is replaced by another error window advising
> me that "There is a problem with the config server -
> (/var/lib/libgconf2-4/gconf-sanity-check exited with status 256)
>
> But if I re-execute that file right now, it gives a null return ANAICT.
I had something similar once when I had a mounting problem. Don't 
remember what exactly, /home wasn't mounted or was mounted read-only.
This may be a long shot, but could you show your /etc/fstab?
And when you have login problems again, press CTRL+ALT+F1 to drop into a 
text-based terminal. You *should* be able to login.
Then do "mount" to see what was mounted where and how.

I know, it's a long shot. It's like the proverbial lupus in House MD. 
They still have to test for it, just to rule it out.

>
> Also, while on this reboot I did get some (not all, only that set I
> normally keep in workspace 5 of 10) of my terminal screens restored, it
> took several minutes after the boot was (theoretically) completed before
> those screens had a cursor, so I was either typing blind, or searching thru
> the shell cli history to find the command I normally run in that
> terminal/tab and re-execute it.
>
> FWIW, memtest86 was run a full cycle earlier this morning, no errors.
>
> This is turning into a right PIMA folks, what can I do?
>
> Thanks all.
>
> Cheers, Gene