Bug#273772: Programs can't connect to gnome-session

[Jacob Lee]

Package: gnome-session
Version: 2.6.2-5
Severity: important

GNOME programs do not display themselves on the screen unless they are given the
 flag --sm-disable. Other programs may or may not display themselves (e.g. xterm
 does, but emacs does not). GNOME programs that are very tightly integrated with
 the desktop (such as gnome-panel and evolution) do not display at all. None of 
these programs exits with an error code; they just do nothing.

The actual behavior when I log in is just the splash screen showing up and nothi
ng else happening. Occasionally the splash screen will show icons for having sta
rted gnome-smproxy (and sometimes also galeon), but not always. The failsafe GNO
ME session also has this problem; I've been testing things out by launching the 
failsafe xterm session and using that to start a window manager, other applicati
ons, and/or gnome-session.

This behavior does not change when I rename .gnome2 and delete the files in /tmp
 (including /tmp/.ICE-unix and everything else owned by me). If I create a new u
ser, this new user has the same problem. The same is true if I create a new user
 with an empty home directory (instead of the default .gnome2 from /etc/skel).

Upgrading the gnome-session package to 2.7.1-1 from experimental and the gnome p
ackages to their latest experimental versions did not fix this problem.

Here are the contents of .xsession-errors immediately after logging in:

/etc/gdm/PreSession/Default: Registering your session with wtmp and utmp
/etc/gdm/PreSession/Default: running: /usr/bin/X11/sessreg -a -w /var/log/wtmp -
u /var/run/utmp -x "/var/lib/gdm/:0.Xservers" -h "" -l ":0" "jacob"
/etc/gdm/Xsession: Beginning session setup...
SESSION_MANAGER=local/vlaszlo:/tmp/.ICE-unix/18022

Sometimes this file has another line at the end, reading "gnome-smproxy: unable 
to connect to session manager"; however, this is not true all the time, and I ca
n't figure out when that line shows up and when it doesn't.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C

Versions of packages gnome-session depends on:

(These are the versions of the packages after upgrading many of them to experime
ntal. I apologize for not having the versions from unstable; however, for all th
ese packages, I was using the latest version as of 9/27/04.)

ii  desktop-base              0.3.14         common files for the Debian Deskto
ii  libart-2.0-2              2.3.16-6       Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii  libatk1.0-0               1.8.0-2        The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libaudiofile0             0.2.6-4        Open-source version of SGI's audio
ii  libbonobo2-0              2.8.0-1        Bonobo CORBA interfaces library
ii  libbonoboui2-0            2.8.0-1        The Bonobo UI library
ii  libc6                     2.3.2.ds1-16   GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libesd0                   0.2.34-1       Enlightened Sound Daemon - Shared
ii  libgconf2-4               2.8.0-1        GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libglib2.0-0              2.4.6-2        The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnome2-0               2.8.0-1        The GNOME 2 library - runtime file
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0         2.7.1-1        A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgnomeui-0              2.8.0-1        The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf
ii  libgnomevfs2-0            2.8.1-1        The GNOME virtual file-system libr
ii  libgtk2.0-0               2.4.10-1       The GTK+ graphical user interface
ii  libice6                   4.3.0.dfsg.1-7 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  liborbit2                 1:2.10.2-1.1   libraries for ORBit2 - a CORBA ORB
ii  libpango1.0-0             1.6.0-1        Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libpopt0                  1.7-5          lib for parsing cmdline parameters
ii  libsm6                    4.3.0.dfsg.1-7 X Window System Session Management
ii  libwrap0                  7.6.dbs-6      Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers libra
ii  libx11-6                  4.3.0.dfsg.1-7 X Window System protocol client li
ii  libxml2                   2.6.11-3       GNOME XML library
ii  libxmu6                   4.3.0.dfsg.1-7 X Window System miscellaneous util
ii  libxrandr2                4.3.0.dfsg.1-7 X Window System Resize, Rotate and
ii  libxrender1               0.8.3-7        X Rendering Extension client libra
ii  libxt6                    4.3.0.dfsg.1-7 X Toolkit Intrinsics
ii  xlibs                     4.3.0.dfsg.1-7 X Window System client libraries m
ii  zlib1g                    1:1.2.1.2-1    compression library - runtime