[Resolved]GDM cannot start gnome3.2 session and other issues

[hypermyth]

Hi, I have hit a complex of problems with gnome 3.2 which may be related (or not) so I will list them together in the hope someone can help. They all started about the same time when I did an emerge -auD world about a week ago. In summary:

1. When I try to start a session from gdm the X server immediately exits and gdm restarts, however I can ctrl-alt-F1 and run startx and get a gnome session that way
2. gnome shell is showing high CPU usage
3. Next network-manager starts asking for passwords. Sometimes it connects sometimes it doesnt. More often not.
4. After recompiling every everything (emerge -e gnome) I no longer have multiple work spaces

To be honest, the gnome-shell issue may be older, though I don't think so, I notice it now because of the other problems.

In the course of the upgrade I obeyed the udev instruction to enable devtmpfs in the kernel. I have tried reverting this, recompiling udev, gnome-shell, network-manager,gdm in more combinations than I can remember. Removing devtmpfs lead to an unusable system with no devices so I am back to a system with the latest ~x86 of all packages that I am using - except that the flglx ati-driver won't compile against kernels later than 3.2.6 and xorg-server 1.11.4

Prior to the upgrade the behaviour that I experienced was that after giving my username and password to gdm the gnome 3 session would start. After a few seconds I would get a gnome-shell popup (black with rounded edges which takes over the desktop) prompting me that my keychain was not unlocked during the login. Once I re-entered my login password wireless connectivity would be established. Apart from the minor annoyance of re-entering my password this worked fine.

Now, after entering my user name and password the screen blanks then X restarts and the gdm login page re-appears. I will post Xorg.log below.
However, I can ctrl-alt-F1 and login and type startx. This always starts the gnome session successfully.

Next I start getting endless popups requesting keychain passwords or wireless keys. Sometimes it connects, usually not despite good signal quality. Lets not dwell on this problem here I will do a separate post if it doesnt get fixed by solving the Gdm issue.


The gnome-shell issue is easiest to explain:

[hypermyth]

Here is the Xorg.0.log.old (because Xorg.0.log contains the restart of gdm after the session crashes. Incidentally I have tried to use the open source ati drivers in the past but I always get poor performance with them So for the time being I will continue to use the flglx (ati-drivers).

[Thistled]

Hey Hypermyth,

Dunno if this might help in anyway, but backup the .config folder which resides in your /home/user/ and then delete it.
See if that resolves the issue. The high CPU usage suggests to me there is some confusion in the gnome-settings-daemon process, and maybe a clean .config might resolve this.
If it does not, then be sure to put the backed up .config folder back into home.
Also, is flgrx built into the kernel, or is it loaded as a module?
_________________
Whatever you do, do it properly!

[hypermyth]

Thanks for the suggestion - unfortunately not successful. The gdm login gnome session exited & restarted gdm without recreating .config. When using startx I still had high CPU from gnome-shell.

fglx is a module built by 'emerge ati-drivers', which creates /lib/modules/3.2.6-gentoo/video/fglrx.ko amongst other shared objects - I didnt know that there was any other way to install it.

[Thistled]

Sorry to hear man.

I'm guessing the .config gets re-created when you successfully log-in to the shell. Which you are not able to do.
Been looking on the web about:

[hypermyth]

Yes it does. Suspicions on those lines were what lead me to mention the sound card in the problem description.

I am starting to play with xfce4 instead - this seems to be working for me (though NetworkManager is playing up - thats another issue) . I think that I might go down that path and see if I can boot gnome-shell altogether. On that basis I think I will mark the issue as Resolved (rather than Solved).

Thanks very much for your help.

[nawwar]

I seem to have a similar problem. gnome-shell (3.2.1) frequently goes to consume something like 50-70% of the CPU until I restart X. I'm still unable to identify the steps that trigger this behavior. But it happens at an annoying frequency - I have to restart X or my machine at least once every day.

Running strace on gnome-shell process shows a an infinite recurrence of messages like this:

[Thistled]

Nawwar.

What happens if you pull back your ati-drivers to the stable 12.2 version?
Does that fix it?
_________________
Whatever you do, do it properly!

[nawwar]

I tried both ati-drivers-12.4 and ati-drivers-12.2 and the same problem exists. Tons of ioctl(10, TUNER_SET_CONFIG, 0x7fffa032a9d0) = 0 calls per second. And gnome-shell intermittently starts using high CPU until X is restarted.

Another issue that may or may not be relevant, is that the windows title bar is almost always graphically corrupted. The close button is not visible.

I don't seem to have any issues with KDE (4.8.2).

[Thistled]

Are you using a different theme other than Adwaita?
Some users, including myself, have had high CPU usage issues with gnome-shell when using a different theme than the default.
_________________
Whatever you do, do it properly!