CentOS - May 2008 - Frequent Gnome Terminal crashes in CentOS 5.1

Ever since I upgraded all my systems to CentOS 5.1 I have been  
getting reports from users about "all their windows disappearing".  A
little digging revealed that they meant all gnome-terminal windows.   
Since there is only one gnome-terminal process by default for all  
your open terminal windows and tabs, a crash of that process means  
losing all your terminal windows.  These crashes often (but not  
always) occur over night when the system is otherwise idle.

A quick Google search found a problem on Ubuntu related to VTE (the  
terminal emulator widget used by gnome-terminal) but not much else of  
interest.  Has anyone on this list experienced this?  I find it hard  
to believe I'm the only one.  I never saw this issue while running  
CentOS 4.X on these systems...

Alfred

On Thu, 2008-05-29 at 14:23 -0400, Alfred von Campe
wrote:
> Ever since I upgraded all my systems to CentOS 5.1 I have been  
> getting reports from users about "all their windows
disappearing".  A
> little digging revealed that they meant all gnome-terminal windows.   
> Since there is only one gnome-terminal process by default for all  
> your open terminal windows and tabs, a crash of that process means  
> losing all your terminal windows.  These crashes often (but not  
> always) occur over night when the system is otherwise idle.
> 
> A quick Google search found a problem on Ubuntu related to VTE (the  
> terminal emulator widget used by gnome-terminal) but not much else of  
> interest.  Has anyone on this list experienced this?  I find it hard  
> to believe I'm the only one.  I never saw this issue while running  
> CentOS 4.X on these systems...
> 
> Alfred
> 
I've seen extreme slow gnome terminals in the past on Cent 5, I even
downgraded the package for the terminal to make it work better. 

Never had it close randomly. I have however had applications randomly
close other then the terminal. 

Gregg.

Alfred von Campe wrote:
> Ever since I upgraded all my systems to CentOS 5.1 I have been getting 
> reports from users about "all their windows disappearing".  A
little
> digging revealed that they meant all gnome-terminal windows.  Since 
> there is only one gnome-terminal process by default for all your open 
> terminal windows and tabs, a crash of that process means losing all your 
> terminal windows.  These crashes often (but not always) occur over night 
> when the system is otherwise idle.
> 
> A quick Google search found a problem on Ubuntu related to VTE (the 
> terminal emulator widget used by gnome-terminal) but not much else of 
> interest.  Has anyone on this list experienced this?  I find it hard to 
> believe I'm the only one.  I never saw this issue while running CentOS 
> 4.X on these systems...
> 
How did you upgrade?

I am running CentOS-5 on many workstations that stay on all the time and 
  I have never had the gnome-terminal crash.

Is it possible that you have older (possibly orphaned) binaries still 
installed from the upgrade process?

If this is from a NEW install, then we need more info to help.

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On May 29, 2008, at 14:48, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> How did you upgrade?
Fresh install via kickstart.  I reformatted the root and /boot  
partitions, but left one user partition untouched.
> Is it possible that you have older (possibly orphaned) binaries  
> still installed from the upgrade process?
I don't think this is possible since I reformatted the root partition  
(I only have /, /boot, and /scratch partitions in addition to a swap  
partition).
> If this is from a NEW install, then we need more info to help.
The process ends without leaving a trace unfortunately (at least that  
I can find).  I did have an strace running on one system attached to  
the gnone-terminal process and it finally died after 5 days or so.   
Here are the last 20 lines from the log:

   open("/usr/share/X11/XErrorDB", O_RDONLY) = 27
   fstat64(27, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=37949, ...}) = 0
   read(27, "! $Xorg: XErrorDB,v 1.3 2000/08/"..., 37949) = 37949
   close(27)                               = 0
   write(2, "The program \'gnome-terminal\' rec"..., 592) =
592
   close(18)                               = 0
   kill(15700, SIGTERM)                    = 0
   writev(14, [{"GIOP\1\2\1\5\0\0\0\0", 12}], 1) = 12
   close(14)                               = 0
   writev(15, [{"GIOP\1\2\1\5\0\0\0\0", 12}], 1) = 12
   close(15)                               = 0
   writev(13, [{"GIOP\1\2\1\5\0\0\0\0", 12}], 1) = 12
   close(13)                               = 0
   writev(11, [{"GIOP\1\2\1\5\0\0\0\0", 12}], 1) = 12
   close(11)                               = 0
   close(9)                                = 0
   close(8)                                = 0
   unlink("/tmp/orbit-kb12698/linc-3d51-0-2491c193d89b6") = 0
   close(12)                               = 0
   exit_group(1)                           = ?

Is there a better way than strace to get some information on this crash?

Alfred