window manager crashes/does not work

This one is after using the DISPLAY=:0 metacity --replace &

    notice that the status of all the windows are present now. which was not earlier. Also the window decoration for all the windows are present.

Which version of Ubuntu do you use? Does this also happen with a new user? Which theme do you use? Did you use compiz/beryl before?

Using version 7.04 . I do not know what u mean by new user , I actually got that shortcut from micah cowan when he was online. No theme . If you are saying icon theme then tangerine icon theme, if from the theme for the whole window then one from the 4-5 stock themes used, will give more when I am on ubuntu desktop. I did use desktop effects but that was like maybe 10-15 days back for about an hr. or so. The graphics chipset is a simple i845 Intel Graphics Express chipset having 8 MB VRAM . That's it. Would be telling about the stock theme in a while. Please lemme know if you need any more info.

Can you create a new (test) user and try logging in with that user. Can you take a look at your own ~/.xsession-errors file and see what you find there?

Ok with the new user, things look fine atm. apart from network being super slow . Put the new user as a desktop user. Here is his .xsession-errors file.

I am unable to do anything as shirish anymore. Would have to re-load the entire thing it seems

Just so you know, shirish, the "DISPLAY=:0" is a guess, and is only likely to work if that user is the first one to have logged into a graphical desktop. You can get the actual value by looking at your current .xsession-errors, the line that says:

/etc/gdm/PreSession/Default: running: /usr/X11R6/bin/sessreg -a -w /var/log/wtmp
 -u /var/run/utmp -x "/var/lib/gdm/:0.Xservers" -h "" -l ":0" "shirish"

If it says something other than ":0" there, use that instead.

The fact that you have a test user working fine, strongly suggests that something is wrong with your configuration. I know seb128 had you move your .gnome2/session out of the way, and you were still having problems... you might try moving your whole .gnome2 out of the way (which will remove your configuration in many programs). If that doesn't work, you might need to move your important things away, destroy the shirish user, and recreate a new account for shirish (since the test account was working).

ok would try that, just to inform the number of things which were tried so everybody knows.
  actually the command which u gave in the morning DISPLAY=:0 metacity --replace && use to give a warning

  shirish @ubuntu $ Window Manager manager warning "found in configuration database is not a valid value for keybinding "toggle_shaded"

   which escalated to the afternoon to :-
 shirish @ubuntu $ Window Manager manager warning "found in configuration database is not a valid value for keybinding "toggle_shaded"
Window Manager error= " Unable to open X display 0"

   which further escalated when trying to use the same route (CTRL+ALT+F1) on console :-

shirish @ubuntu $ Window Manager manager warning "found in configuration database is not a valid value for keybinding "toggle_shaded"

xlib: connection to "0.0" refused by server
xlib: No protocol specified

    Further things tried by seb128 :-

gconftool --2 --get /desktop/gnome/application window_manager/default ?

/usr/bin/metacity

      failed to get a value for '?' Bad key or directory name '?" Must begin with a slash (/)

   was asked if there was any .dmrc directory in /home/username which was replied in negative

     was asked to move the file ~/.gnome2/session which had no effect

      then tried sudo apt-get install --reinstall metacity_common which again did not result into anything better

        The only solution which works in the meanwhile is typing 'metacity' without the quotes in terminal brings all window decorations etc.

   Micah Cowan will try moving ~/gnome too & will report how it goes but tomorrow morning, as its already past 12 a.m. here.

shirishag75 wrote:
> ok would try that, just to inform the number of things which were tried so everybody knows.
> actually the command which u gave in the morning DISPLAY=:0 metacity --replace && use to give a warning
>
> shirish @ubuntu $ Window Manager manager warning "found in
> configuration database is not a valid value for keybinding
> "toggle_shaded"

That doesn't look like a serious problem.

> which escalated to the afternoon to :-
> shirish @ubuntu $ Window Manager manager warning "found in configuration database is not a valid value for keybinding "toggle_shaded"
> Window Manager error= " Unable to open X display 0"

That looks like you forgot the colon again :)

> shirish @ubuntu $ Window Manager manager warning "found in configuration
> database is not a valid value for keybinding "toggle_shaded"
>
> xlib: connection to "0.0" refused by server
> xlib: No protocol specified

This probably means :0 isn't owned by you (perhaps the test user was
running that session?); that's why I talked about checking the value in
~/.xsession-errors.

> Further things tried by seb128 :-
>
> gconftool --2 --get /desktop/gnome/application window_manager/default ?
>
> /usr/bin/metacity
>
> failed to get a value for '?' Bad key or directory name '?" Must begin with a slash (/)

That's because he hadn't actually meant the "?" to be typed. Otherwise,
it worked fine. (And, he just wanted to get the /usr/bin/metacity value:
he wasn't expecting it to fix anything.)

> was asked if there was any .dmrc directory in /home/username which
> was replied in negative
>
> was asked to move the file ~/.gnome2/session which had no effect
>
> then tried sudo apt-get install --reinstall metacity_common which
> again did not result into anything better
>
> The only solution which works in the meanwhile is typing
> 'metacity' without the quotes in terminal brings all window decorations
> etc.

What this essentially means is that running metacity by hand fixes
things, but for some reason metacity is either not running by default in
your gnome session, or is crashing for some strange reason. moving
~/.gnome2/session seems like it should have fixed it; but ~/.gnome2
definitely ought to: it's just a bit draconian (though not as much so as
blowing away the user's home directory), since any customizations to
gnome apps that you've done will have to be redone.

Thanks for the run-down, shirish!

On 4/12/07, Micah Cowan <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> <snipped>
> > The only solution which works in the meanwhile is typing
> > 'metacity' without the quotes in terminal brings all window decorations
> > etc.
>
> What this essentially means is that running metacity by hand fixes
> things, but for some reason metacity is either not running by default in
> your gnome session, or is crashing for some strange reason. moving
> ~/.gnome2/session seems like it should have fixed it; but ~/.gnome2
> definitely ought to: it's just a bit draconian (though not as much so as
> blowing away the user's home directory), since any customizations to
> gnome apps that you've done will have to be redone.

    Actually it was pretty easy, when I moved .gnome2 out of the way,
by customization to the applications which are saved during the session,
those were gone but i can happily live with that, as more important is that
I got my desktop back. Just to reflect here is my paste of .xsession
-errors now
http://paste.ubuntu-nl.org/15175/
                 Thank you everybody for your help/suggestions. Please
close/reject the bug now.

--
> window manager crashes/does not work
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/105390
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
          Shirish Agarwal
  This work is licensed under the Creative Commons NonCommercial Sampling
Plus 1.0 License. To view a copy of this license, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/nc-sampling+/1.0/

Actually, just to be sure we know what the problem was, rather than close the bug out yet, if you still have the old, moved-out-of-the-way .gnome2/ directory around, could you maybe tar it up and attach it? «tar xjf gnome2.tbz moved-gnome2/» should do.

Here is the file you requested.

ok now the gnome-session does not work at all , atleast in kernel 2.6.20-14.22 while there is a momentarily blank & sorta works on 2.6.20-12.20

I have the same here. First GDM didn't run, so I ran the old kernel and disabled the restricted drivers, and rebooted to the newer kernel. Now Metacity doesn't run in the newest kernel, leaving me without any borders and desktop, causing gnome-panel to chrash regularly.

And, when I tried to re-enable the restricted drivers via the Restricted Drivers Manager it told me "Your hardware does not need any restricted drivers."

the session has nothing special. Deleting the attachment since it had user configuration datas and is not really required on the bug

But, surely there must have been /something/ in the configuration that caused metacity not to work, since blowing it away got it working again?

that's not sure the submitter attached a buggy config, there was nothing special to the session file, he might just have attach the current config he's using which works correctly

when I was asked to move the .gnome2/ directory I moved it into the windows hard disk so there would be no issues. When asked to do .tar.gz did the same by moving it back but onto desktop so that there would be no issues like that.
        Btw I have upgraded to the 1.9.94 but it still happens intermittently sometimes going from -15 to -12 solves the issues sometimes not. Then have to resort to repair kernel, enter gdm at the prompt, do some work for sometime, then do a normal shutdown then the next time I use any of the kernels the system works. Although the brief flash after logging in still happens. I'll be doing a clean install day after tomorrow, in case if you guys want me to run some tests please lemme know.
       This is crazy, I thought I had reported this but apparently not, sometimes when the screen goes blank even the virtual terminals tty1-6 are not accessible. I have to use magic keys or hard boot . Many a times when I do the (ALT+SYSRQ+S), then (ALT+SYSRQ+U) then (ALT+SYS+B) to reboot but even after doing tht most of the times it fails, whenever the screen goes blank I have to try these 2-3 methods whichever gets me the desktop after GDM is good for that time, and times after that. Feels like some .config for that session is saved & carried over to the next.

I have a very similar issue. I did not upgrade however, this is a clean install to 7.04.

I read the above posts and my .xsession-errors is also littered with tons of 'alarm' junk from evolution. The only things that relate to metacity that I can tell are two lines about Window Manager "failing to read theme file ..." However, i have changed back to the default 'Human' theme, restarted X, and the same thing happens. I have my gnome panels, but any windows or dialogue boxes are in the top-left corner.

I can type 'metacity' in a terminal, and it comes back but this happens any time I log out or restart X.

Do you use session saving? Do you run softwares which don't handling it correctly? Could be a duplicate of bug #106350

I also have this problem, but I am running with and upgraded 7.04 Ubuntu, if it would help I can upload ~/.gnome2 or .xsession-errors files

We are closing this bug report as it lacks the information, described in the previous comments, we need to investigate the problem further. However, please reopen it if you can give us the missing information and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future.

same issue here.
When i restart the PC the window manager don't work.
I have o enable/disable (the opposite of the actual state) Desktop Effects or Beryl or Compiz.
In none of this 3, work correctly. Sometimes even disappears the bottom and upper Panel.

The problem started when i had only installed Compiz (default in 7.04).

Don't know if it has something to have with this issue but the startup Splash freezes at loading Nautilus and loads all of the graphical environment excepts the 'Notification Area'. A minute later if finally unfreeze, loads the Notification Area and the window manager crashes.

Hi Sebastian,
 Here are the things you asked, yes I do use session-saving, although dunno which softwares run or do not run it correctly.

I use the following softwares most of the time.

a. BOINC
b. firefox-3.0
c. exaile
d. gnome-terminal
e. deluge

That is about it. Also changed the bug to new.

I still have this issue in ubuntu 8.10 b1 should I file a new bug-report or continue with this one?

I can run things without issues in xfce but not in GNOME (most probably metacity is the issue) dunno.

Have also changed the status to NEW from invalid as well :(

I am uploading the .gnome2 directory tarred and bzipped

tar jcvf gnome.tar.bz2 .gnome

hmm... ok even after deleting or moving .gnome2, that was .gnome2 which I compressed and uploaded above still I'm not getting any useful stuff, dunno what to do :(

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Could you try to reproduce the same with Ubuntu 9.04? Thanks in advance.

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.