Sleepy time -- Fixed itself sometime ago

Fred Krogh · Last edited by Fred Krogh on Wed Mar 13, 2013 2:33 am; edited 5 times in total

I'm running a amd64~ system. Gnome was working fine after the latest upgrade, but after a recent reboot, something wants to open things in sleep mode. Thus you can start firefox for example, but there is nothing to see as it is sleeping. The problem only occurs in terminal windows that are open initially. Say the user that I log in as is "u". then su u password does not help, but su -u password gets things in a mode where all works! Some icons on my toolbar work others don't.

After more messing around, firefox will start from the original windows and from the toolbar, but others don't. There seems to be no reason for the change of heart on the part of firefox. To focus on one program, emacs has the same problem but despite the power of emacs does not correct itself. Of course I can always use it my logging in with su - u, but this seems a bit of a pain, and I can't even open a new terminal window from the toolbar.

I had thought early in the game that perhaps the problem here https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-855808.html might have something to do with the problem, and it might. But the warning messages I've been getting have disappeared after

Fred Krogh · Posted: Thu Dec 30, 2010 7:39 pm Post subject:

I'm hoping someone will have an idea on this problem. I've just done an emerge -e world using gcc-4.5.2 in the hope that this would make a change, but still after running for a bit, I can't start emacs in a terminal window without first doing an su - <same user> in that window. Any wild ideas out there? Thanks,
Fred

VoidMage · Watchman Joined: 14 Oct 2006 Posts: 6196

Some of your problems are caused by a tighter dbus integration, which makes 'su -' a necessity to reset
dbus vars. However, this should not affect the actively logged in user.

Unless you have a consolekit problem.

Fred Krogh · Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 12:12 am Post subject:

Thanks -- a little background is nice. Thanks to your comment, I discovered that sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart, also gets things working. Since everything has been recently compiled I don't see why I should be the only one with a consolekit problem. Is anyone else out there seeing this kind of weirdness?

Fred Krogh · Posted: Fri Dec 31, 2010 1:53 am Post subject:

It seems that rhythmbox will not start under by primary user no matter what I do. The error message may suggest something to someone.

VoidMage · Watchman Joined: 14 Oct 2006 Posts: 6196

Well, there's also the mysterious bug 297483.

Fred Krogh · Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:10 pm Post subject:

It appears that my problem was due to starting dbus. Deleted that using rc-config and the system appears to be working the way it should. Hald does start dbus, so dbus is still running.

VoidMage · Watchman Joined: 14 Oct 2006 Posts: 6196

Well, that depends on your definition - there's no point of hal in Gnome anymore.

Fred Krogh · Posted: Sat Jan 08, 2011 8:38 pm Post subject:

Thanks, I removed hald, and all still seems to work. Something is starting dbus, which I presume is what is desired.

Fred Krogh · Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2011 10:06 pm Post subject:

I was premature in thinking this has been resolved. It seems that the first sign of a problem is that the mouse moves, but clicking on something does nothing. Then if I use <cntl><alt><F1> to get a console window and then return to X, the mouse action has been done, and all appears normal, but certain things no longer work. The work around of changing user (to the same user) in a terminal window seems to make it possible to do most of the things that I want to do. I'm still looking for ideas. Thanks,
Fred

Fred Krogh · Posted: Sun Feb 06, 2011 9:13 pm Post subject:

I believe that I have pinpointed the place when things go bad. All seems to work normally until I click on the gnome icon (the foot print) that is on the tool/menu bar. Perhaps this suggests where the problem is?? (Not to me!)

VoidMage · Watchman Joined: 14 Oct 2006 Posts: 6196

Pastebin your xorg.conf and check ck-list-sessions.

Fred Krogh · Posted: Mon Feb 07, 2011 1:16 am Post subject:

My xorg.conf (comments and blank lines removed)

Fred Krogh · Posted: Tue Feb 08, 2011 7:19 pm Post subject:

I think I have this fixed. A close look at ~/.xsession-errors suggested a problem with dbus. After

Fred Krogh · Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 5:37 pm Post subject:

This problem returned after emerging an update to dbus, although it took a long time after the update for the problem to show up. The fix above worked again.

Fred Krogh · Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 6:58 pm Post subject:

I posted a bug report here: https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=356877 and got this response

Fred Krogh · Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 7:09 pm Post subject:

I should have added the list of groups that my user is not in, that root is in. Is it possible that putting my user in one of these groups: "root, bin, daemon, dialout", would make a difference?

VoidMage · Watchman Joined: 14 Oct 2006 Posts: 6196

Fred Krogh · Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 7:51 pm Post subject:

The icon for gnome-terminal when clicked on opens the terminal in sleep mode. Firefox has the same problem. Emacs starts in sleep mode if I start it in a terminal window. All of these things used to work if I did su - "same user" in a terminal window. But this last time around it wouldn't open a new user claiming that the password was wrong. I could get to the user I wanted if I got to it through a root window. Does this suggest anything? Thanks.

VoidMage · Watchman Joined: 14 Oct 2006 Posts: 6196

Honestly, I've got no idea what "opens <whatever> in sleep mode" means.

How do you start X server anyway ?

Fred Krogh · Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 9:36 pm Post subject:

I'd have no idea either if it wasn't happening to me! Start firefox (for example) nothing happens. With the alias
alias psg='ps -eo "%p %u %a" -o s | grep -v grep | grep -v "ps -eo" | grep -i',
psg firefox shows firefox was started and is now sleeping. Pehaps there was a way to wake it up, but I didn't find it.

X starts with no problem, and in fact when I have had problems they only showed up after I clicked on the gnome footprint on the tool bar. I have DISPLAYMANAGER="gdm", in /etc/conf.d/xdm.

VoidMage · Watchman Joined: 14 Oct 2006 Posts: 6196

Does anything interesting gets printed if you start one of those "sleepy" apps via terminal ?

Fred Krogh · Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2011 10:03 pm Post subject:

No nothing is printed.