My desktop died about an hour ago while i was using Konqueror, with moans about dcopserver not running. I had to restart the window manager with ctrl-alt-backspace.
After that I couldn’t get into a graphical desktop, gnome, KDE or even twm. Gnome moaned about .ICEauthority.
So, from the console, I created another user, and was able to log in to a Gnome desktop. I tried to “switch user” and , surprise, it worked, my original bork’d account now worked. I’ve logged out and back in a few times, rebooted once, and things seem OK
I’m apprehensive. What happened?
The “create new user” / “switch user” trick seems worthy of posting here anyway, it might save someone else.
> My theory is that a package was updated some hours before and the
> system was left in an inconsistent state.
hmmmm…i’m seeing more and more often (here) where a reboot ‘fixes’
strange issues…sad actually, as i fear we are marching directly
toward being a mirror of the well known, more popular and expensive
(but inferior) software…the more we try to look like theirs, the
more ours acts like theirs…
soon (a relative term) we will be rebooting along with every update
of any-/every-thing…kinda like them.
–
see caveat: http://tinyurl.com/6aagco
DenverD (Linux Counter 282315) via NNTP, Thunderbird 2.0.0.14, KDE
3.5.7, SUSE Linux 10.3, 2.6.22.18-0.2-default #1 SMP i686 athlon
>> My theory is that a package was updated some hours before and the
>> system was left in an inconsistent state.
>
> hmmmm…i’m seeing more and more often (here) where a reboot ‘fixes’
> strange issues…sad actually, as i fear we are marching directly
> toward being a mirror of the well known, more popular and expensive
> (but inferior) software…the more we try to look like theirs, the
> more ours acts like theirs…
>
> soon (a relative term) we will be rebooting along with every update
> of any-/every-thing…kinda like them.
>
it’s just some user doesn’t know that they don’t need to reboot
after updating software, except for kernel only.
i blame for misguided information out there and from the old habit
derived from “the-well-known-more-popular-and-expensive-software”,
and we must stop their habit from NOW.
so let they know.
IMHO, there is three type of update,
1 - kernel
yes, system need to reboot.
2 - X (XOrg including KDE, GNOME, and any other WM)
no, system do not need to reboot, just log off and log in
again,
OR press CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE
OR go to tty1 and inspect this command as root
$ init 3 && init 5 && exit
3 - Y (any other package/software beside kernel and X)
you just need to close the program and start it again.
some program, i.e. bind, apache, etc, need special treatment
usually using rc<programname> to reload to the system.
it seems every day here i see a handful of folks asking questions as
if they have read less about HOW to install/set up/operate linux
as they read about their VCR (which is STILL blinking 00:00:00 three
years later)…
you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him read.
</sigh>
DenverD (Linux Counter 282315) via NNTP, Thunderbird 2.0.0.14, KDE
3.5.7, SUSE Linux 10.3, 2.6.22.18-0.2-default #1 SMP i686 athlon
ok that was a bad joke. i think by suggest/tell them not to, at least from
now.
i can try, you can try, there is still a hope. tell your friend, hijack a
thread,
reedit the wiki.
My mystery crash happened again. Konqueror complained about dcopserver, the machine bacame sluggish, so I quit the X server with ctrl-alt-BS.
This time the “switch user” trick mentioned in post #1 did not work so I think it is a red herring.
The symptom is that GDM lets you in, but the screen stays green for several tens of seconds until a message appears about being unable to lock .ICEauthority and suggests reporting a GNOME bug.
I deleted ${HOME}/.ICEauthority. THis didn’t work. I noticed two similar files ${HOME}/.ICEauthority.[cm] had appeared, so I deleted them.
I next deleted everything in /tmp/.ICEunix/ (the clue being the name) and tried again.
This let me back in. Deleting the aforementioned files seems to be the cure. I’m not too enthusiastic about performing a ctrl-alt-BS to force the issue, obviously. At least this time the fix has some logical connection to the error message.
