Bug#308515: gnome-panel's menus periodically appear empty

[Jon Dowland]

Package: gnome-panel
Version: 2.8.3-1
Severity: normal

Every now and then gnome-panel's menu is empty.

`Applications' shows the expected child elements, but these are empty (a
tiny rectangle is displayed when you hover the mouse, which looks like a
menu with nothing in it).

Often clicking on `Applications' to close it and then opening it again
causes the items to re-appear, but not always.

There is no .xsession-errors output corresponding to this phenomena. The
`Debian Menu' is always properly populated.

I'd appreciate advice on how to further debug this problem :-)

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.10-jmtd
Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_GB (charmap=ISO-8859-1)

Versions of packages gnome-panel depends on:
ii  gnome-control-center 1:2.8.2-3           The GNOME Control Center for GNOME
ii  gnome-desktop-data   2.8.3-2             Common files for GNOME 2 desktop a
ii  gnome-panel-data     2.8.3-1             common files for GNOME 2 panel
ii  gnome-session        2.8.1-6             The GNOME 2 Session Manager
ii  libart-2.0-2         2.3.17-1            Library of functions for 2D graphi
ii  libatk1.0-0          1.8.0-4             The ATK accessibility toolkit
ii  libbonobo2-0         2.8.1-2             Bonobo CORBA interfaces library
ii  libbonoboui2-0       2.8.1-2             The Bonobo UI library
ii  libc6                2.3.2.ds1-21        GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libecal6             1.0.4-1             Client library for evolution calen
ii  libedataserver3      1.0.4-1             Utily library for evolution data s
ii  libgconf2-4          2.8.1-5             GNOME configuration database syste
ii  libglade2-0          1:2.4.2-2           library to load .glade files at ru
ii  libglib2.0-0         2.6.4-1             The GLib library of C routines
ii  libgnome-desktop-2   2.8.3-2             Utility library for loading .deskt
ii  libgnome2-0          2.8.1-2             The GNOME 2 library - runtime file
ii  libgnomecanvas2-0    2.8.0-1             A powerful object-oriented display
ii  libgnomeui-0         2.8.1-3             The GNOME 2 libraries (User Interf
ii  libgnomevfs2-0       2.8.4-3             The GNOME virtual file-system libr
ii  libgtk2.0-0          2.6.4-1             The GTK+ graphical user interface 
ii  libice6              4.3.0.dfsg.1-12.0.1 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  liborbit2            1:2.12.2-1          libraries for ORBit2 - a CORBA ORB
ii  libpanel-applet2-0   2.8.3-1             library for GNOME 2 panel applets
ii  libpango1.0-0        1.8.1-1             Layout and rendering of internatio
ii  libpng12-0           1.2.8rel-1          PNG library - runtime
ii  libpopt0             1.7-5               lib for parsing cmdline parameters
ii  libsm6               4.3.0.dfsg.1-12.0.1 X Window System Session Management
ii  libstartup-notificat 0.8-1               library for program launch feedbac
ii  libwnck4             2.8.1-3             Window Navigator Construction Kit 
ii  libx11-6             4.3.0.dfsg.1-12.0.1 X Window System protocol client li
ii  libxext6             4.3.0.dfsg.1-12.0.1 X Window System miscellaneous exte
ii  libxml2              2.6.16-7            GNOME XML library
ii  xlibs                4.3.0.dfsg.1-12     X Keyboard Extension (XKB) configu
ii  zlib1g               1:1.2.2-4           compression library - runtime

-- no debconf information