Bug#646726: gnome-settings-daemon: Crashes under load

[Roland Mas]

Package: gnome-settings-daemon
Version: 3.0.3-3
Severity: normal

gnome-settings-daemon seems to be very sensitive to load.  Admittedly my
PC is not that recent, but I should be able to run a VirtualBox
instance, do a bzr rebase and fetch my emails with offlineimap at the
same time without having my whole Gnome session disappear under me.  I
don't have hard facts linking the crash to the load, but the behaviour
seems consistent with that hypothesis:

- no crash when I just idle on the computer;
- things start flickering (including gtk themes and virtual desktops)
  when several apps become active at the same time; that includes
  VirtualBox, Iceweasel with a JS-happy site, offlineimap, bzr,
  minitube, and so on;
- if I'm quick and I kill one of those apps within a few seconds of the
  flickering starting, I can usually keep my session running normally;
  there's a gray zone where the gtk2 apps such as Xchat revert to an
  ugly Gtk theme, but the rest of the session comes back to normal; if I
  wait too long, the session goes down (sometimes with the "Oh no!
  Something has gone wrong." screen).

My .xsession-errors.old file contains the following references to
gnome-settings-daemon:
,----
| ** (gnome-settings-daemon:5910): WARNING **: Failed to acquire org.gnome.SettingsDaemon
| ** (gnome-settings-daemon:6837): WARNING **: Could not acquire name
`----
Then:
,----
| The application 'gnome-settings-daemon' lost its connection to the display :0;
| most likely the X server was shut down or you killed/destroyed
| the application.
`----

  I should probably add that these crashes started happening to me only
since the Gnome 3 upgrade, and that I'm using the fallback session with
Metacity (and no Nautilus handling the desktop, if it helps).

Roland.
-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 3.0.0-2-686-pae (SMP w/1 CPU core)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages gnome-settings-daemon depends on:
ii  dconf-gsettings-backend [gsettings-backend]  0.7.5-3              
ii  gsettings-desktop-schemas                    3.0.1-1              
ii  libatk1.0-0                                  2.2.0-2              
ii  libc6                                        2.13-21              
ii  libcairo-gobject2                            1.10.2-6.1           
ii  libcairo2                                    1.10.2-6.1           
ii  libcanberra-gtk3-0                           0.28-3               
ii  libcanberra0                                 0.28-3               
ii  libcomerr2                                   1.42~WIP-2011-10-16-1
ii  libcups2                                     1.5.0-10             
ii  libdbus-1-3                                  1.4.16-1             
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2                             0.98-1               
ii  libfontconfig1                               2.8.0-3              
ii  libfreetype6                                 2.4.7-2              
ii  libgconf2-4                                  2.32.4-1             
ii  libgcrypt11                                  1.5.0-3              
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0                           2.24.0-1             
ii  libglib2.0-0                                 2.28.8-1             
ii  libgnome-desktop-3-0                         3.0.2-2              
ii  libgnome2-common                             2.32.1-2             
ii  libgnomekbd7                                 3.2.0-1              
ii  libgnutls26                                  2.12.12-1            
ii  libgssapi-krb5-2                             1.9.1+dfsg-3         
ii  libgtk-3-0                                   3.0.12-2             
ii  libgudev-1.0-0                               172-1                
ii  libice6                                      2:1.0.7-2            
ii  libk5crypto3                                 1.9.1+dfsg-3         
ii  libkrb5-3                                    1.9.1+dfsg-3         
ii  libnotify4                                   0.7.4-1              
ii  libpackagekit-glib2-14                       0.6.18-1+b1          
ii  libpango1.0-0                                1.29.4-2             
ii  libpolkit-gobject-1-0                        0.102-1              
ii  libpulse-mainloop-glib0                      1.1-1                
ii  libpulse0                                    1.1-1                
ii  libsm6                                       2:1.2.0-2            
ii  libsqlite3-0                                 3.7.8-1              
ii  libstartup-notification0                     0.12-1               
ii  libupower-glib1                              0.9.14-1             
ii  libx11-6                                     2:1.4.4-2            
ii  libxext6                                     2:1.3.0-3            
ii  libxi6                                       2:1.4.3-3            
ii  libxklavier16                                5.1-2                
ii  nautilus-data                                3.0.2-4              
ii  zlib1g                                       1:1.2.3.4.dfsg-3     

Versions of packages gnome-settings-daemon recommends:
ii  pulseaudio  1.1-1

Versions of packages gnome-settings-daemon suggests:
ii  gnome-screensaver            3.0.1-2   
ii  metacity [x-window-manager]  1:2.34.1-2
ii  mutter [x-window-manager]    3.0.2.1-4 
ii  x11-xserver-utils            7.6+3     

-- no debconf information

-- 
Roland Mas

Plus on en fout, plus y'en a du riz.
  -- Proverbe chinois.