Gnome2.28/KDE4.3.5 can't resize/move/etc windows [solved(?)]

[orange_juice]

************* EDIT ******************
22/5/2010

After configuring my desktop -mostly in Gnome 2.28 and just for once in KDE 4.3.5- the upper bar where minimize, maximize, and close buttons reside, disappears and all windows open at the top left corner without permitting any moving or resizing with the mouse cursor.

More over, all shortcuts (widgets) in panels do not work except from the main menu shortcut.

I am now reemerging world to be sure just in case.

When this appeared originally after upgrading gnome, it was consistent. Even when I created a new user and everything worked great -with the default configuration- no matter how many times I logged in/out, rebooted etc, when I changed the desktop configuration (added widgets, changed colours etc) and rebooted the problem was there.

I unmerged gnome and emerged KDE where it appeared only once when I downloaded a new desktop theme and tried to install it. However, everything returned back to normal when I logged out and then back in with this very specific theme installed and working fine. It seems that KDE is more stable and I am currently using it.

I report it, in case someone else meets the same behavior.

Kind regards,
orange_juice

My emerge --info with gnome setup is here: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-p-62 ... ml#6286065
My current emerge --info is the following:

Code: Select all

emerge --info
Portage 2.1.8.3 (default/linux/amd64/10.0, gcc-4.3.4, glibc-2.10.1-r1, 2.6.32-gentoo-r7 x86_64)
=================================================================                              
System uname: Linux-2.6.32-gentoo-r7-x86_64-AMD_Athlon-tm-_64_X2_Dual_Core_Processor_4800+-with-gentoo-1.12.13
Timestamp of tree: Fri, 21 May 2010 20:15:01 +0000                                                            
app-shells/bash:     4.0_p37                                                                                  
dev-java/java-config: 2.1.10                                                                                  
dev-lang/python:     2.6.4-r1                                                                                 
dev-util/cmake:      2.6.4-r3                                                                                 
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.13                                                                                  
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.6-r2                                                                                   
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.63-r1                                                                            
sys-devel/automake:  1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r3, 1.10.3, 1.11.1                                                       
sys-devel/binutils:  2.18-r3                                                                                  
sys-devel/gcc:       4.3.4                                                                                    
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1                                                                                   
sys-devel/libtool:   2.2.6b                                                                                   
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.30-r1                                                                                
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"                                                                                       
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA dlj-1.1"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O2 -pipe -msse3"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/lib/hsqldb /var/qmail/alias /var/qmail/control"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c /usr/X11R6/bin/startx"
CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O2 -pipe -msse3"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="assume-digests buildpkg distlocks fixpackages news parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://files.gentoo.org http://files.gentoo.org ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/gentoo/ http://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.uoi.gr/mirror/OS/gentoo/ http://ftp.uoi.gr/mirror/OS/gentoo/ http://ftp.physics.auth.gr/pub/mirrors/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.physics.auth.gr/pub/mirrors/gentoo/ "
LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"
LINGUAS="en en_GB el uk"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
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://192.168.10.20/gentoo-portage"
USE="3dnow 3dnowext X Xaw3d a52 aac aalib accessibility acl acpi addbookmarks alias alsa amarok amd64 amr amrnb amrwb apache2 apm applet ares artworkextra asf aspell ass atmo audio audiofile autoreplace avahi avantgo avi beagle bindist bitmap-fonts bluetooth bogofilter bonjour branding bzip2 bzlib cairo caps cdda cddax cddb cdiao cdio cdparanoia cdr cdrkit cgraph connectionstatus consolekit contactnotes corefonts cpudetection cracklib crypt css ctype cups curl curlwrappers cxx dbus dc1394 designer-plugin desktopglobe device-mapper dga digitalradio dillo dirac disk-partition divx divx4linux djbfft djvu dmx doc dri dssi dts dv dvb dvd dvdr dvdread dvi editor eigen elf enca encode exceptions exif expat external-fuse extrafilters extras fam fame ffmpeg fftw firefox fits flac flash fontconfig fortran fpx fts3 fuse gadu galago gcj gcrypt gd gdbm gdu ggi gif gimp gimpprint glade glib gmedia gnokii gnutls gpac gphoto2 gpm gps grace graphviz groupwise gs gsl gsm gstreamer gtk guile hal handbook hdri highlight history httpd hunspell iconv icu idn ieee1394 imagemagick imap imlib indi inkjar ipod irc jabber jack jadetex java javascript jbig jingle jpeg jpeg2k jsapi kate kde kdrive keyboard kipi kontact ladspa lame lamne lapack lcms ldap libass libburn libcaca libffi libgcrypt libnotify libsamplerate libsexy libssh2 libsysfs libtiger libv4l2 libwww lightning lirc live lm_sensors logitech-mouse lua lzo mad maildir matroska mbrola md5sum mdnsresponder-compat meanwhile memlimit menu-plugin midi mikmod mjpeg mmap mmx mmxext mng modplug mono motif mozdom mozilla mp2 mp3 mp4 mpeg mpi mplayer mpm-prefork msn mtp mudflap multilib multimedia musepack musicbrainz nas nautilus ncurses neXt nemesi netcdf network networking networkmanager nls nntp no-suexec nowlistening nptl nptlonly nsplugin nvidia nvtv objc objc++ objc-gc ocamlopt odbc offensive ogg oggvorbis openexr opengl openmp oss pam pcf pcre pda pdf perl phonon pipes plasma pm-utils png pnm podcast policykit posix povray ppds prediction privacy profile ps psf pvr python q32 qalculate qq qt3 qt3support qt4 quicktime radio rar raw rdesktop readline realmedia regex romio rpm rss rtc ruby sametime sasl scanner schroedinger sdl sdl-image semantic-desktop session shout silc skins skype slang slp smartcard smime smp sms smux sndfile snmp sockets solver sound sox spamassassin speex spell sqlite sse sse2 ssh ssl ssse3 startup-notification static-modules statistics stream subtitles svg t1lib tacl taglib tcl tcltk tcpd teletext texteffect theora threads thumbnail thunar tidy tiff timezone tk tokenizer totem tracker translator trash-plugin truetype truetype-fonts twolame type1-fonts udev unicode urlpicpreview usb utf8 utils v4l v4l2 vcd vcdinfo vcdx vdr vhook video vlm vnc vorbis wav wavpack webkit webpresence winpopup wmf wmp x264 xanim xcb xface xine xinetd xml xmldoclet xmlpatterns xmp xorg xpdf-headers xpm xscreensaver xsl xulrunner xv xvid xvmc yahoo yv12 zephyr zeroconf zip zlib zoran zvbi" ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="alaw copy dshare dsnoop extplug null shm adpcm file hooks ladspa lfloat linear meter mulaw multi rate route share asym dmix empty iec958 ioplug mmap_emul plug softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="access auth mime-magic headers log_config setenvif mime dir so authz_host alias negotiation rewrite autoindex" APACHE2_MPMS="worker" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en en_GB el uk" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia fbdev vesa vga" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account"
Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

***************************************

Hallo,

I have just upgraded to gnome 2.28.

When I open any program, it gets stacked on the top left corner in a fixed window dimension, there is no header (no close, minimize, maximize buttons) and I cannot resize it. Moreover, in order to be able to write on this window, (like I am doing now) the mouse should be hovering over it, otherwise the window does not respond to any keyboard interaction.

The panels with all the links to the programs I have on the top and on the bottom of my screen do not work, meaning that I cannot even change desktops.

I would appreciate your help.

Kind regards,
orange_juice

[pizzach]

Have you tried restarting? Have you run revdep-rebuild?

You're missing metacity.

[patrikas]

That's true, make sure metacity is running and it's not missing any libraries. Check Xorg logs for errors, try to start it manually.

[orange_juice]

Thank you for replying promptly.

Actually, I have rebooted several times and revdep-rebuild gives nothing to rebuild.

I recompiled metacity and when I tried to run it manually in a terminal, I got the following error:

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metacity:ERROR:core/prefs.c:2482:meta_prefs_get_workspace_name: assertion failed: (workspace_names[i] != NULL)

***EDIT***

The output of the Xorg.0.log is the following:

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(EE) Failed to load module "xtrap" (module does not exist, 0)
(EE) May 10 01:30:46 NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the GLX module; please check in your X
(EE) May 10 01:30:46 NVIDIA(0):     log file that the GLX module has been loaded in your X
(EE) May 10 01:30:46 NVIDIA(0):     server, and that the module is the NVIDIA GLX module.  If
(EE) May 10 01:30:46 NVIDIA(0):     you continue to encounter problems, Please try
(EE) May 10 01:30:46 NVIDIA(0):     reinstalling the NVIDIA driver.

Code: Select all

(WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/artwiz" does not exist.
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx/100dpi".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx/75dpi".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx/misc".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/default".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/encodings".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/encodings/large".
(WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/freefont" does not exist.
(WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/new_fonts" does not exist.
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/util".
(WW) AllowEmptyInput is on, devices using drivers 'kbd', 'mouse' or 'vmmouse' will be disabled.
(WW) Disabling Mouse0
(WW) Disabling Keyboard0
(WW) Open ACPI failed (/var/run/acpid.socket) (No such file or directory)
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module xtrap

Kind regards,
orange_juice

[alexbuell]

Thank you for replying promptly.

Code: Select all

(EE) Failed to load module "xtrap" (module does not exist, 0)
(EE) May 10 01:30:46 NVIDIA(0): Failed to initialize the GLX module; please check in your X
(EE) May 10 01:30:46 NVIDIA(0):     log file that the GLX module has been loaded in your X
(EE) May 10 01:30:46 NVIDIA(0):     server, and that the module is the NVIDIA GLX module.  If
(EE) May 10 01:30:46 NVIDIA(0):     you continue to encounter problems, Please try
(EE) May 10 01:30:46 NVIDIA(0):     reinstalling the NVIDIA driver.

Code: Select all

(WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/artwiz" does not exist.
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx/100dpi".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx/75dpi".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx/misc".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/default".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/encodings".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/encodings/large".
(WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/freefont" does not exist.
(WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/new_fonts" does not exist.
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/util".
(WW) AllowEmptyInput is on, devices using drivers 'kbd', 'mouse' or 'vmmouse' will be disabled.
(WW) Disabling Mouse0
(WW) Disabling Keyboard0
(WW) Open ACPI failed (/var/run/acpid.socket) (No such file or directory)
(WW) Warning, couldn't open module xtrap

Please check whether you've installed the nvidia-drivers correctly first. Also, make sure you use eselect to set opengl to nvidia. It might be incorrectly set to xorg-x11 which is a big no-no where nvidia is concerned.

Hope this helps.

[orange_juice]

Please check whether you've installed the nvidia-drivers correctly first. Also, make sure you use eselect to set opengl to nvidia. It might be incorrectly set to xorg-x11 which is a big no-no where nvidia is concerned.

Hope this helps.

Thanx, you are right. I have corrected the issue with the nvidia drivers.

Code: Select all

 cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep EE
Current Operating System: Linux daedalus 2.6.32-gentoo-r7 #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Apr 28 20:23:55 EEST 2010 x86_64
        (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(II) Loading extension MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
(EE) Failed to load module "xtrap" (module does not exist, 0)

Code: Select all

(WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/artwiz" does not exist.
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx/100dpi".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx/75dpi".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/cronyx/misc".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/default".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/encodings".
(WW) `fonts.dir' not found (or not valid) in "/usr/share/fonts/encodings/large".
(WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/freefont" does not exist.
(WW) The directory "/usr/share/fonts/new_font

Almost nothing has changed ...

However, I ran metacity manually as root user and I got a richer result. The first paragraph was repeated 10-20 times resulting in the following error. I have included only one copy of the paragraph.

Code: Select all

GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details —  1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.)
**
metacity:ERROR:core/prefs.c:2482:meta_prefs_get_workspace_name: assertion failed: (workspace_names[i] != NULL)

Orbit has only one flag, "doc". I cannot imagine how I can enable tcp/ip networking. I do not have any nfs server running. I am not aware of the message bus security policy ... and my question is: Why does metacity need to connect somewhere in order for my desktop to be working properly?

How could I downgrade to my previous installation???

Kind regards,
orange_juice

[orange_juice]

OK ... fixed it. I downgraded to metacity 2.26.0-r1 and gnome works fine.

Kind regards,
orange_juice

[orange_juice]

However, portage is kind of complaining:

Code: Select all

emerge --deep --newuse --update world -pv

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done!

Total: 0 packages, Size of downloads: 0 kB

!!! The following update has been skipped due to unsatisfied dependencies:

gnome-base/gnome:2.0

!!! All ebuilds that could satisfy ">=x11-wm/metacity-2.28.1" have been masked.
!!! One of the following masked packages is required to complete your request:
- x11-wm/metacity-2.28.1 (masked by: package.mask)

(dependency required by "gnome-base/gnome-2.28.2" [ebuild])

For more information, see the MASKED PACKAGES section in the emerge
man page or refer to the Gentoo Handbook.

I would appreciate your help so I can make gnome 2 run smoothly.

Code: Select all

emerge --info
Portage 2.1.8.3 (default/linux/amd64/10.0, gcc-4.3.4, glibc-2.10.1-r1, 2.6.32-gentoo-r7 x86_64)
=================================================================
System uname: Linux-2.6.32-gentoo-r7-x86_64-AMD_Athlon-tm-_64_X2_Dual_Core_Processor_4800+-with-gentoo-1.12.13
Timestamp of tree: Mon, 17 May 2010 20:45:03 +0000
app-shells/bash:     4.0_p37
dev-java/java-config: 2.1.10
dev-lang/python:     2.6.4-r1
dev-util/cmake:      2.6.4-r3
sys-apps/baselayout: 1.12.13
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.6-r2
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.63-r1
sys-devel/automake:  1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r3, 1.10.3, 1.11.1
sys-devel/binutils:  2.18-r3
sys-devel/gcc:       4.3.4
sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1
sys-devel/libtool:   2.2.6b
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.30-r1
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="amd64"
ACCEPT_LICENSE="* -@EULA dlj-1.1"
CBUILD="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O2 -pipe -msse3"
CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /var/lib/hsqldb /var/qmail/alias /var/qmail/control"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/texmf/language.dat.d /etc/texmf/language.def.d /etc/texmf/updmap.d /etc/texmf/web2c /usr/X11R6/bin/startx"
CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -O2 -pipe -msse3"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="assume-digests buildpkg distlocks fixpackages news parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-logs unmerge-orphans userfetch"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://files.gentoo.org http://files.gentoo.org ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/gentoo/ http://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/linux/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.uoi.gr/mirror/OS/gentoo/ http://ftp.uoi.gr/mirror/OS/gentoo/ http://ftp.physics.auth.gr/pub/mirrors/gentoo/ ftp://ftp.physics.auth.gr/pub/mirrors/gentoo/ "
LANG="en_GB.UTF-8"
LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1"
LINGUAS="en en_GB el uk"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/"
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://192.168.10.20/gentoo-portage"
USE="3dnow 3dnowext X Xaw3d a52 aac aalib accessibility acl acpi addbookmarks alias alsa amarok amd64 amr amrnb amrwb apache2 apm applet ares artworkextra asf aspell ass atmo audio audiofile avahi avi beagle bindist bitmap-fonts bluetooth bogofilter bonjour branding bzip2 bzlib cairo caps cdda cddax cddb cdiao cdio cdparanoia cdr cdrkit cgraph connectionstatus consolekit contactnotes corefonts cpudetection cracklib crypt css ctype cups curl curlwrappers cxx dbus dc1394 device-mapper dga digitalradio dillo dirac disk-partition divx divx4linux djbfft djvu dmx doc dri dssi dts dv dvb dvd dvdr dvdread dvi elf enca encode epiphany exceptions exif expat external-fuse extrafilters extras fam fame ffmpeg fftw firefox flac flash fontconfig fortran fpx fts3 fuse gadu galago gcj gcrypt gd gdbm gdu ggi gif gimp gimpprint glade glib gmedia gnome gnomecd gnutls gpac gphoto2 gpm grace graphviz groupwise gs gsm gstreamer gtk gtk2 guile hal hdri highlight history httpd hunspell iconv icu idn ieee1394 imagemagick imap imlib inkjar ipod irc jack jadetex java javascript jbig jingle jpeg jpeg2k jsapi kate kdrive keyboard ladspa lamne lapack lcms ldap libass libburn libcaca libffi libgcrypt libnotify libsamplerate libsexy libssh2 libsysfs libtiger libv4l2 libwww lightning live lm_sensors logitech-mouse lua lzo mad maildir matroska mbrola md5sum mdnsresponder-compat meanwhile memlimit menu-plugin midi mikmod mjpeg mmap mmx mmxext mng modplug mono motif mozdom mozilla mp2 mp3 mp4 mpeg mpi mplayer mpm-prefork mtp mudflap multilib musepack musicbrainz nas nautilus ncurses neXt nemesi netcdf network networking networkmanager nls nntp no-suexec nowlistening nptl nptlonly nsplugin nvidia nvtv objc objc++ objc-gc odbc offensive ogg oggvorbis openexr opengl openmp oss pam pcf pcre pda pdf perl png pnm podcast policykit posix povray ppds prediction profile psf pvr python q32 qq qt3 qt3support qt4 quicktime radio rar raw rdesktop readline realmedia regex romio rpm rtc ruby sametime sasl scanner schroedinger sdl sdl-image semantic-desktop session shout silc skins slang slp smartcard smime smp sms smux sndfile snmp sockets sound sox spamassassin speex spell sqlite sse sse2 ssh ssl ssse3 startup-notification static-modules statistics stream subtitles svg t1lib tacl taglib tcl tcltk tcpd teletext texteffect theora threads thunar tidy tiff timezone tk tokenizer totem tracker translator trash-plugin truetype truetype-fonts twolame type1-fonts udev unicode usb utf8 utils v4l v4l2 vcd vcdinfo vcdx vdr vhook video vlm vorbis wavpack webkit webpresence wmf wmp x264 xanim xcb xface xine xinetd xml xmldoclet xmp xorg xpdf-headers xpm xscreensaver xsl xulrunner xv xvid xvmc yahoo yv12 zephyr zeroconf zlib zoran zvbi" ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="alaw copy dshare dsnoop extplug null shm adpcm file hooks ladspa lfloat linear meter mulaw multi rate route share asym dmix empty iec958 ioplug mmap_emul plug softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="access auth mime-magic headers log_config setenvif mime dir so authz_host alias negotiation rewrite autoindex" APACHE2_MPMS="worker" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="en en_GB el uk" RUBY_TARGETS="ruby18" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia fbdev vesa vga" XTABLES_ADDONS="quota2 psd pknock lscan length2 ipv4options ipset ipp2p iface geoip fuzzy condition tee tarpit sysrq steal rawnat logmark ipmark dhcpmac delude chaos account" 
Unset:  CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS

[pizzach]

Code: Select all

GConf Error: Failed to contact configuration server; some possible causes are that you need to enable TCP/IP networking for ORBit, or you have stale NFS locks due to a system crash. See http://projects.gnome.org/gconf/ for information. (Details —  1: Failed to get connection to session: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.) 

...You could always check to see if the gconf daemon is even running. You should do something like the below:

Code: Select all

$ ps -A | grep gconf

and get a result like

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 5757 ?        00:00:03 gconfd-2

The error is from meta_prefs_get_workspace_name and gconf handles preferences. Metacity doesn't explicitly rely on hardware acceleration, so fixing the errors in xorg wouldn't be that useful. You may want to even use gconf-editor to look at your preferences for metacity to see if there is a problem.

[orange_juice]

Hallo, thanx for replying promptly!

Code: Select all

$ ps -A | grep gconf

I get a sound result, as user and as root too.

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8773 ?        00:00:00 gconfd-2

The error is from meta_prefs_get_workspace_name and gconf handles preferences. Metacity doesn't explicitly rely on hardware acceleration, so fixing the errors in xorg wouldn't be that useful. You may want to even use gconf-editor to look at your preferences for metacity to see if there is a problem.

I took a look at gconf-editor and in /apps/metacity/workspace_names, I see name_1 name_2 name_3 etc etc

However in apps/metacity/window_keybindings there are a lot of disabled options in choices like move resize maximize minimize etc, which is of no importance as I figure out since they are referring to combination of keys that can do the job. I must say that the valid key combinations that are referred on that screen (like minimize for example) do not work at all.

There is also a category desktop/gnome/applications/window_manager that has some deprecated options that are disabled and that sounds OK since they are deprecated.

Now I am on xfce which runs smoothly. Isn't it also using metacity?

Kind regards,
orange_juice

[pizzach]

Now I am on xfce which runs smoothly. Isn't it also using metacity?

No it does not. I think your gconf options are probably fried for metacity. You didn't try creating a fresh account and seeing if metacity works correctly like I said? If you test it, a lot of maybes can be narrowed down.

[orange_juice]

I think your gconf options are probably fried for metacity.

Absolutely!

Thanx a lot. I deleted every gconfd folder in my directory (the old user), and the default settings work great.

I was not aware that I had consciously modified those settings.

Never mind, everything works great now. Thank you!

Kind regards,
orange_juice

********** EDIT ************

When I rebooted, the problem appeared again.

I created a new user and everything works great.

I wish I knew what went wrong in my old home directory ...

Anyway, it is working now even if I had to change some habits!

Kind regards,
orange_juice

[orange_juice]

If the desktop stays untouched, everything works great.

When I add the colors I like, the icons I use in panels etc etc, the problem reappears ...

I will try KDE then, although I find it overwhelmingly fuzzy.

****************** EDIT ********************
Although KDE works great, this very problem appeared once.
I have entered more details at the first post.
*******************************************


Kind regards,
orange_juice

[Icer]

I had similar issues.

Try this: open gconf-editor(configuration-editor).
open desktop->gnome->session->required_components
edit the windowmanager key. I had there gnome-wm. I substituted that with metacity.

So far seems to work. At least this change worked over logout and re-login. Will have to see if it helps over reboot too.

[Icer]

I'm happy to report that at least here the fixes work over reboot too.

[orange_juice]

Great!

I have now KDE on, and I just experienced this issue (again) for a second.

I mean that suddenly the full size window became smaller on the top left corner without the upper part with the resizing buttons, and then it got resized to full screen again.

In the meantime, during reemerging world, I noticed some errors and issuing the command

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revdep-rebuild --soname libjpeg.so.7

I found out that there is a lot of work that has to be done rebuilding certain packages!

I have read around that a broken libjpeg may wreck havoc to a box ... Not sure however -yet- if this will fix the problem, of course it is a good starting point.

Kind regards,
orange_juice

[pizzach]

You may want to do an "emerge -e world" at some point and browse very carefully the messages that come up after installation. Have you run "lafilefixer --justfixit" after upgrades when emerge warns you to?

[orange_juice]

Yup, I just finished the emerging.

lafilefixer --justfixit was very helpful.

I indeed had a broken jpeg library. I do not have gnome to test it, but for the time being kde runs smoothly without any problem.

Kind regards,
orange_juice