Public bug reported:
https://launchpad.net/malone/bugs/28493
Affects: gnome-panel (Ubuntu)
Severity: Normal
Priority: (none set)
Status: Unconfirmed
Description:
I'm using Ubuntu Breezy 64-bit, with backports enabled. If you are just
browsing these bug reports and are new to Linux, please DO NOT follow
these directions! They cause a complete desktop freeze, and a machine
reboot will not recover your desktop!
To reproduce:
(the problem happens every time for me)
Create a new user account, log out then log in as the new user (this is simply
to recreate the default Ubuntu settings).
Right-click near the middle of the top panel and choose "Add to panel...".
Choose "Main Menu" with the Ubuntu logo (NOT the "Menu Bar" next to it) and add
it.
Click on the newly-added icon on your panel, go to System -> Administration and
right-click on "Add Applications".
Go to "Entire menu" and choose "Add this as menu to panel".
My desktop immediately freezes at this point.
Symptoms:
Desktop becomes unresponsive to any mouse-clicks (although the mouse-cursor
still moves about). After rebooting the system and logging in, the desktop
shows blank grey bars at top and bottom, where the panels would have been
drawn, and an endless series of error dialogs is shown. The "top" command
shows that gnome-panel is consuming 99% CPU, so it is evidently stuck in an
infinite loop.
The only way that I know how to recover the desktop is to go to "init 1". Then
"cd" to /home/<user>/.gconf/apps/panel/objects
In that directory, there are lots of "object_NN" directories. Find the one
that was most recently created (e.g. with "ls -lt") and then delete it. That
procedure cures the problem for me.
"gnome-panel --version" gives "Gnome gnome-panel 2.12.1". The version
according to Synaptic is "2.12.1-0ubuntu7 (breezy)"
I can figure out how to get a stack-trace using "ddd" and attaching to
the spinning "gnome-panel" process. Please let me know if you want this
info, but I'd prefer to know if there's a more convenient way to get
this (I'm not very familiar with Linux command-line debugging tools,
sorry :-).
This problem appears to be specific to the "Main Menu" panel item, and
doesn't seem to happen with the "Menu Bar" item which is used by default
and looks the same but with the "Applications Places System" text
showing.
Many thanks,
Lambros
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