gnome 2.22: no background, no icons on 1st login, ok on 2nd

Message

magowiz · Post by **magowiz** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 10:37 am

Hi,
I have a problem : when I boot the system and login the first time with gnome 2.22 I get a black background and no incons on my desktop. If I logout and login again I can see background and icons again. What should it be ?

jmartos · Post by **jmartos** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 2:29 pm

I'm having the exact same problem, except it does seem to be intermittent. Most of the time I log in, I get the problem and every now and then I dont. I'm using x86-64 stable and gnome 2.22. Any help would be approciated. I cannot find anything in any log file that would point me to a solution.

Clad in Sky · Post by **Clad in Sky** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 5:24 pm

I have a similar problem sometimes. I have a background but all icons are missing.
killall nautilus does the trick.
What _causes_ this is another question. Dunno. It's very rare on my system.

tom_bxl · Post by **tom_bxl** » Mon Dec 01, 2008 7:20 pm

Same here; no desktop icons at first login.

jmartos · Post by **jmartos** » Fri Dec 05, 2008 11:10 am

Anyone have any suggestions on what could be the problem here?

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Fri Dec 05, 2008 2:41 pm

Can you guys post emerge --info? It might be a USE flag issue.

overkll · Post by **overkll** » Fri Dec 05, 2008 4:06 pm

Over the years, I've had this issue several times on different machines. If it's intermitent, sometimes nuking all the files in /tmp helps. Sometimes there are duplicate directories for one user, like /tmp/orbit-username. If it turns into a permanent problem, I've found that /home/username/.gconf needs to be recreated by logging out, moving ~/.gconf, then logging in again. The only problem with that is that the gnome settings are reset to default and one has to re-customize ones desktop again. A bit of a pain, but it works.

tom_bxl · Post by **tom_bxl** » Sat Dec 06, 2008 6:19 am

Here is my emerge --info. Thanks!

Code: Select all

Portage 2.1.6_rc3 (default/linux/x86/2008.0/desktop, gcc-4.1.2, glibc-2.6.1-r0, 2.6.27-gentoo-r4-mbp-tom i686)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-2.6.27-gentoo-r4-mbp-tom-i686-Intel-R-_Core-TM-2_Duo_CPU_T8300_@_2.40GHz-with-glibc2.0
Timestamp of tree: Sat, 06 Dec 2008 05:45:02 +0000
app-shells/bash:     3.2_p33
dev-java/java-config: 1.3.7, 2.1.6
dev-lang/python:     2.5.2-r7
dev-util/cmake:      2.4.6-r1
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.11.1
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.18.1-r2
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.61-r2
sys-devel/automake:  1.5, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.1-r1
sys-devel/binutils:  2.18-r3
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.0-r4
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.26
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.23-r3
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86"
CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=prescott -fomit-frame-pointer -O2 -pipe"
CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/config"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d"
CXXFLAGS="-march=prescott -fomit-frame-pointer -O2 -pipe"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="distlocks fixpackages parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://ftp.first-world.info/ ftp://ftp.first-world.info/ ftp://sunsite.informatik.rwth-aachen.de/pub/Linux/gentoo http://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/ ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/gentoo/ http://de-mirror.org/distro/gentoo/ ftp://de-mirror.org/distro/gentoo/ http://mirror.muntinternet.net/pub/gentoo/ ftp://mirror.muntinternet.net/pub/gentoo/ "
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"
LINGUAS="en fr nl"
MAKEOPTS="-j2"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.europe.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="X a52 aac acl acpi aim alsa apm audiofile avahi bash-completion beagle berkdb bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cddb cdparanoia cdr cli compiz-fusion cracklib crypt css dbus dri dts dv dvd dvdr dvdread eds emboss enblend encode esd evo exif fam fat fbcon ffmpeg firefox flac fortran ftp gdbm gif gimp glitz gnome gnome-keyring gpac gphoto2 gpm gstreamer gtk gtkhtml hal hddtemp iconv ieee1394 imagemagick imap ipv6 irda isdnlog isight java javascript jbig jpeg jpeg2k lame laptop lcms ldap libgda libnotify lirc lm_sensors mac macbook mad midi mikmod mime mng mono mozilla moznopango mp3 mp4 mpeg msn mtp mudflap musepack musicbrainz nautilus ncurses networkmanager nfs nls nptl nptlonly nsplugin ntfs nvidia obex offensive ofx ogg old-daemons openal opengl openmp paludis pam pcre pda pdf perl pmu png portage portaudio posix ppds pppd python qt3 qt3support qt4 quicktime raw readline reflection rss scanner sdl session sift skins smp source sox speex spell spl ssl startup-notification stream svg sysfs tcpd theora threads tiff totem truetype unicode usb v4l v4l2 vcd videos vnc vorbis wifi win32codecs wmf x86 xcb xcomposite xml xorg xosd xpm xscreensaver xv xvid xvmc yahoo zlib" ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" CAMERAS="ptp2 canon" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse synaptics evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en fr nl" LIRC_DEVICES="macmini" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia"
Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Sat Dec 06, 2008 5:52 pm

tom, have you tried overkill's suggestion?

One note on your make.conf - ACCEPT_KEYWORDS should be "~x86".

Also, as someone else was good enough to point out to me recently, unless there's a specific reason for it, you don't need a monolithic package and could emerge gnome-light instead. I never need evolution and all that other gnome-specific stuff, preferring instead to use the mail and browser programs of my choice.

tom_bxl · Post by **tom_bxl** » Sun Dec 07, 2008 3:13 pm

Thanks for the replies, overkll & audiodef.

tom, have you tried overkill's suggestion?

I completely wipe out /tmp at each reboot and this does not seem to help. I also created a new test user with an empty home dir. Login in the first time worked ok; the desktop icons are there, after a couple of logins/logouts, it also happened; sometimes no desktop icons.

One note on your make.conf - ACCEPT_KEYWORDS should be "~x86".

I don't think so; since I do NOT want a ~x86 system. My gentoo choice

. I'm quite conservative and have hardly no ~x86 packages except my kernl. I'd rather use the flags on a package basis rather than fr my whole system. Also regarding gnome; I use most of the packages coming with gnome (and more) including evolution. Btw, I have been using gnome 2.22 on other distributions without facing such problem.

Tom

jmartos · Post by **jmartos** » Mon Dec 08, 2008 11:45 am

I also tried the two suggestions, removing /tmp and .gconf. Both did not help. Still looking for a fix.

audiodef · Post by **audiodef** » Mon Dec 08, 2008 5:33 pm

If you want stable, and not arch, shouldn't you comment out the ACCEPT_KEYWORDS line? I installed Gnome without ACCEPT_KEYWORDS and it has no issues (of course, others, and I, have installed it WTIH ACCEPT_KEYWORDS and it was fine, but sometimes a system has its own quirks).

Totally last ditch suggestion, one I've used when I've come across something I couldn't solve otherwise: start again. Don't do nothin' fancy with make.conf until everything is up and running. I did that on the system I'm using right this minute, because otherwise xdm/xorg/login manager would not work. Period. Once it was up and I wanted masked stuff (~arch or otherwise), I used the package.* files rather than ACCEPT_KEYWORDS, otherwise a single emerge uDN world would eff it all up.

A pain in the a$$, I know, but it might solve your problem. If you tweak your make.conf a little at a time you might come across the one thing that made this mess and comment out that option. I've also found that a few fresh Gentoo installs eventually hammers it home what not to do with a particular machine and what I can get away with.