Gnome 2.16 crashes after loading some apps

How much swap space do you have? You can see it from free -mt command.

Right now I have a swap partition of 2 gbs, and 5% is used under kubuntu running opera, kopete, amarok and gimp. (its not runing fast but its runing... ;)
Any other information that you need?

Is that partition active while running Ubuntu?

yup. at least ist what it says.

Could you please verify if in your /var/log/messages file there is something like this:
gconfd: Received signal 15, shutting down cleanly
gconfd: Exiting

Yup, It does have somenthing like that.
Heres what it says:

Oct 13 11:57:15 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4347): starting (version 2.16.0), pid 4347 user 'aimeri'
Oct 13 11:57:16 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4347): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only configuration source at position 0
Oct 13 11:57:16 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4347): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/home/aimeri/.gconf" to a writable configuration source at position 1
Oct 13 11:57:16 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4347): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 2
Oct 13 11:57:16 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4347): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/debian.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 3
Oct 13 11:57:16 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4347): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 4
Oct 13 11:58:01 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4347): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/home/aimeri/.gconf" to a writable configuration source at position 0
Oct 13 11:59:13 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4347): Received signal 15, shutting down cleanly
Oct 13 11:59:13 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4347): Exiting
Oct 13 11:59:15 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4509): starting (version 2.16.0), pid 4509 user 'aimeri'
Oct 13 11:59:15 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4509): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only configuration source at position 0
Oct 13 11:59:15 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4509): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/home/aimeri/.gconf" to a writable configuration source at position 1
Oct 13 11:59:15 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4509): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 2
Oct 13 11:59:15 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4509): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/debian.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 3
Oct 13 11:59:15 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4509): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 4
Oct 13 11:59:45 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4509): GConf server is not in use, shutting down.
Oct 13 11:59:45 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4509): Exiting
Oct 13 11:59:48 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4579): starting (version 2.16.0), pid 4579 user 'aimeri'
Oct 13 11:59:48 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4579): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory" to a read-only configuration source at position 0
Oct 13 11:59:48 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4579): Resolved address "xml:readwrite:/home/aimeri/.gconf" to a writable configuration source at position 1
Oct 13 11:59:48 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4579): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 2
Oct 13 11:59:48 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4579): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/debian.defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 3
Oct 13 11:59:48 localhost gconfd (aimeri-4579): Resolved address "xml:readonly:/var/lib/gconf/defaults" to a read-only configuration source at position 4
Oct 13 12:00:00 localhost gconfd (aimeri-457...

I noticed the same behaviour some times ago. I partially solved this by completely disabling AGPGART kernel support. Could you please try if it works for you too?
Obviously, that wasn't the right way to handle this. I'm going to do further researches on it and file a new bug in GNOME, if needed.

I forgot to ask you if you use a driver for a graphical card such nVidia or ATI.

No, I dont use any drive for those fancy 3d graphical cards,,, My pc is older than my sister,,, It dont have any agp port or nothing like that :) The graphical card is a old matrox, but I dont remember the model.

I will try your workaround as soon as I reinstall ubuntu-desktop (Iĺl do that now), and as soon as I figure how to do that,,, If you could explain me how to disable AGPGART kernel suport I would be much gratefull to you.
Thanks for the atention

In order to see if it is enabled, you should run the following command:
cat /boot/config | grep CONFIG_AGP
If it is set as y, you have to recompile your kernel. If otherwise it is set as m, you could insert agpgart in cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. Next reboot it shouldn't be loaded (you can verify it with lsmod | grep agpgart).

Well, just thought I could give an update on this, cuz the most strange thing happened while I was installing ubuntu-desktop: I started the process using sudo aptitude install ubuntu-desktop using the first shell ctrl+alt+f1 (i don't like to do huge upgrades using any graphical interface...)
Everithing went fine and when the instalation was done I restarted the pc and choosed gnome as the desktop under kdm. When the gui was loaded, for my surprise I had a pure not modified gnome 2.16, without any ubunto modification. That's really odd. Whel, I went to synaptic to get the rest of ubuntu stuff. As soon as the package manager finish the updates I will give another update in the situation.
By the way everything was working fine so far... no gui restarting. lets see after the updates.

Well, all updates done and the problem is back... I tryed the command that you gave me but it returned a invalid archive or folder message then I went to /boot dir and Surprise: no conf file. So, what to do now?

Are there any config file such as config-2.6.17 or so? It sounds very strange if they aren't there.

Ok, my bad, there where the vmlinuz files there, one for each of my 3 kernels... well, then the result was all with m, and I aded the extra line to the blacklist and restarted the pc. At first it worked fine, but since I'm using kde too I got that issue with the gtk-qt engine under gnome. As soon as I uninstalled the gtk-qt engine and tried restarting linux, going to gnome (and everithing was looking nice again) and launched firefox and guess what? Gnome restarted and sent me back to kdm. I really have no idea on what to do. I dont supose it can be any kind of driver incompatibility cuz it all worked fine under breezy and dapper, and under kubuntu edgy to, and besides this pc is rather old, so I'm really guessing on some kind of misconfiguration from my side. Any help or ideas are welcomed.

Try to switch temporarily to gdm by modifiy /etc/X11/default-display-manager file and see what happens. When you added agpgart module to blacklist file, did you check with lsmod if it was blacklisted correctly?

It would be very useful if you can attach a backtrace of it. In order to do so, you can login in a virtual console and launch the following command:
gdb /usr/bin/gnome-session -p pid_of_your_gnome-session

Once you reach gdb prompt, type the following instructions:
handle SIGKILL nopass stop print
handle SIGQUIT nopass stop print
cont

Now you can use your GNOME session normally and, when crash occours, you can switch to the virtual console and obtain a backtrace with the following instructions:
backtrace
info regs
thread apply all backtrace

Those informations will be very useful to triage this bug.

Hi, sorry for the delay on coming back. Well. I noticed that agpgart does not appear with the lsmod. I dont know if I blacklisted it right, but I just edited the /etc/modprob.d/blacklist with sudo vim, and added blacklist agpgart to the end of the file. I dont know the right way to do that and thats perhaps why agpgart is not blacklisted. Could you please help me with that? And also, here goes the output of gdb (I used | tee gdb.txt with the command you told me to run, is that ok?):

GNU gdb 6.4.90-debian
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are
welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions.
Type "show copying" to see the conditions.
There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "i486-linux-gnu"...(no debugging symbols found)
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libthread_db.so.1".

Attaching to program: /usr/bin/gnome-session, process 4081
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgnome-desktop-2.so.2...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libgnome-desktop-2.so.2
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgnomeui-2.so.0...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libgnomeui-2.so.0
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libSM.so.6...
(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libSM.so.6
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libICE.so.6...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libICE.so.6
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgnome-2.so.0...
(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libgnome-2.so.0
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libesd.so.0...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libesd.so.0
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0...
(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so.0...
(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libatk-1.0.so.0
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libgdk_pixbuf-2.0.so.0
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libXrandr.so.2...
(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libXrandr.so.2
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libpango-1.0.so.0
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libX11.so.6...
(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libX11.so.6
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libbonobo-2.so.0...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libbonobo-2.so.0
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4...
(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libbonobo-activation.so.4
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libgconf-2.so.4...(no debugging symbols found)...done.
Loaded symbols for /usr/lib/libgconf-2.so.4
Reading symbols from /usr/lib/libORBit-2.so.0....

You should also type in the following instruction:
handle SIGTERM nopass stop print
This way developers have a good point to begin examining it.

P.S. When posting backtraces, please attach them using the form below :)

I noticed a lot of users have the same problem:
http://ubuntuforums.org/search.php?searchid=8970240.

I went to a couple of those posts, but none of them look exactly the same... They are similar though.
Well, here goes the backtrace attached now.
Let's see if that helps.

I filed a new bug in GNOME bugtracker. Let's see what happens.

Well, sure thing those guys from gnome are very busy... The bug report remains untouched. Dont you have any temporary solution for it? I dont think that waiting for edgy to be released will work, since the problem seems to be related to gnome 2.16.
I would really like to go back to gnome... Kde have a nice look and all but its very boring after a while... I rather use gnome since it is away faster and I like the ubuntu human theme as well :P
Thanks Luca, you have beeing such a nice guy!

What do you know! I just tried for curiosity sakes to login into ubuntu using the gnome failsafe option and voila! No crashes, no kicking out, no nothing... But in the other hand, as soon as I logged in, gnome have given me a error message about some message daemon wich failed to open. I will grab that message and post here but I dont believe that it was related to the issue.
So I guess the problem was with ubuntu after all...

Ok, sorry for the double post, but I really dont know how to edit my last one.
Well, here goes the message, or something very close since I got this one from the terminal, but I think that the problem still the same, only that the first one was more visual...

Unable to connect to dbus: Unable to determine the address of the message bus (try 'man dbus-launch' and 'man dbus-daemon' for help)
** (gnome-settings-daemon:18824): CRITICAL **: dbus_g_connection_register_g_object: assertion `connection != NULL' failed

** (gnome-settings-daemon:18824): CRITICAL **: dbus_g_proxy_new_for_name: assertion `connection != NULL' failed

** (gnome-settings-daemon:18824): CRITICAL **: dbus_g_proxy_call: assertion `DBUS_IS_G_PROXY (proxy)' failed

** (bug-buddy:18832): WARNING **: Couldn't load icon for Open Folder

Remembering that Im in the gnome failsafe now, and I can open Firefox (wich is what Im using to post here right now.) and theme manager for example, but my changes dont really change anything on the theme manager....

Any ideas?

It seems dbus is not working properly using failsafe session. I suggest you to enable it (/etc/init.d/dbus restart) and then launching Firefox or any other application which causes a session shutdown.

Hi, it's been a long time since you originally reported this issue.
On GNOME Bugzilla, it has been asked you to install some package from http://people.ubuntu.com/~pitti/ddebs.
If you still notice this, try to follow some guidelines listed at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash.
However, if you think your problem has been solved, please close this report.

As described in the previous comments, your report lacks the information we need to investigate the problem further. We'll close this report for now - please reopen it if you can give us the missing information.