CentOS - Jun 2008 - General CentOS 5.1 (or Gnome) instability?

I've been a big fan of CentOS for a while, and didn't have many  
issues with CentOS 4.X over the past few years.  However, since  
moving to CentOS 5.1 a few weeks ago, I have received more problem  
reports from my users than in the last year and a half on CentOS  
4.X.  I've previously reported the problem with gnome-terminal  
crashing (and since there is a single gnome-terminal process by  
default all your terminal windows disappear which makes this really  
painful), and now I'm getting multiple reports of Gnome applets  
suddenly quitting.  Sometimes this includes the entire screen  
"flashing" (probably a side effect of the "Show Desktop"
applet
exiting).  I've also had reports of some third party tools like  
SlickEdit misbehaving and/or crashing on CentOS 5.1.

Don't get me wrong; I'm not really complaining about CentOS.  I  
really appreciate what the CentOS team does.  I am just wondering if  
anyone else has seen these issues.  If it was just one or two users,  
I would suspect the hardware or some configuration issues.  But these  
issues started cropping up after I upgraded our existing systems to  
CentOS 5.1.  The "upgrade" was a complete reinstall via a kickstart  
script (I reformatted all partitions/LVs except for one), and all  
systems are configured identically.  BTW, I'm using CentOS for our  
desktops as well as our servers, and all these problems are really  
confined to the desktop systems.  Almost everyone uses the default  
Gnome desktop.

So, does anyone else have the perception that CentOS 5.X  
(particularly Gnome) is a little less stable than CentOS 4.X or is it  
just me?

Alfred

On Wed, June 4, 2008 4:14 pm, Alfred von Campe wrote:
<snip>
> So, does anyone else have the perception that CentOS 5.X
> (particularly Gnome) is a little less stable than CentOS 4.X or is it
> just me?
Alfred,

I can tell you that five (very different) desktop machines that I manage
work without any problems under CentOS 5, but they all run KDE.  Based on
my experience, I would be inclined to believe that your problems are
somehow Gnome related.

Marko

On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 16:14 -0400, Alfred von Campe
wrote:
> <snip>
> I would suspect the hardware or some configuration issues.  But these  
> issues started cropping up after I upgraded our existing systems to  
> CentOS 5.1.  The "upgrade" was a complete reinstall via a
kickstart
> script (I reformatted all partitions/LVs except for one), and all  
> systems are configured identically.  BTW, I'm using CentOS for our  
> desktops as well as our servers, and all these problems are really  
> confined to the desktop systems.  Almost everyone uses the default  
> Gnome desktop.
> 
> So, does anyone else have the perception that CentOS 5.X  
> (particularly Gnome) is a little less stable than CentOS 4.X or is it  
> just me?
I've been running 5.1 for a long time, NP except the Firefox. I'm using
the 3.0rc1 now and all but the Java applets work fine with it. It is
more stable.

As to your specific problem, since hardware is not common among the
users reporting problems, I suspect that the only commonality is the
configuration *beginning* with the automated install. My thought is
there is some flaw in it that becomes common to (almost?) all the
installations.

It might be instructive to do one real manual install (that matches as
closely as possible the automated results) on a representative system
and an automated one. Then map the differences.

Just as general notes from astutely watching this list, I guess mixed
32/64 bit libs could be an issue. Components from mixed repositories?
All yum updated (been several things fixed since original 5.1 - I don't
know if they are related).

Have you examined the logs for any machines that seem consistently
problematic?

That's all that comes to mind ATM.
> 
> Alfred
> 
> <snip sig stuff>
HTH
-- 
Bill

On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 1:14 PM, Alfred von Campe <alfred at von-campe.com>
wrote:
> I've been a big fan of CentOS for a while, and didn't have many
issues with
> CentOS 4.X over the past few years.  However, since moving to CentOS 5.1 a
> few weeks ago, I have received more problem reports from my users than in
> the last year and a half on CentOS 4.X.  I've previously reported the
> problem with gnome-terminal crashing (and since there is a single
> gnome-terminal process by default all your terminal windows disappear which
> makes this really painful), and now I'm getting multiple reports of
Gnome
> applets suddenly quitting.  Sometimes this includes the entire screen
> "flashing" (probably a side effect of the "Show
Desktop" applet exiting).
>  I've also had reports of some third party tools like SlickEdit
misbehaving
> and/or crashing on CentOS 5.1.
>
> Don't get me wrong; I'm not really complaining about CentOS.  I
really
> appreciate what the CentOS team does.  I am just wondering if anyone else
> has seen these issues.  If it was just one or two users, I would suspect
the
> hardware or some configuration issues.  But these issues started cropping
up
> after I upgraded our existing systems to CentOS 5.1.  The
"upgrade" was a
> complete reinstall via a kickstart script (I reformatted all partitions/LVs
> except for one), and all systems are configured identically.  BTW, I'm
using
> CentOS for our desktops as well as our servers, and all these problems are
> really confined to the desktop systems.  Almost everyone uses the default
> Gnome desktop.
>
> So, does anyone else have the perception that CentOS 5.X (particularly
> Gnome) is a little less stable than CentOS 4.X or is it just me?
>
I run my desktop and my laptop on 5.1 using GNOME without any of those
problems.  My desktop is a 64 bit host with 4GB of memory, and I run a
completely mixed 32/64 bit environment (not entirely out of choice).
>From your description, it seems like you've run into a GDE problem,
not a CentOS problem.  The main problems I've seen with GDE are:

1) A mysterious bug that caused the system to stop processing logouts,
halts and reboots unless I took unusual measures to do them
(explicitly kill the gnome session to log out, or run halt or reboot
instead of using the shutdown applet), but those also mysteriously
disappeared after about a month of me fighting with it.  I think it
was ESD related, but it's gone....

2) An interesting bug when I try to run the Network Connections
applet, it kills all my open nautilus windows.  I don't usually use
that applet, so it's an annoyance but one I don't see a lot (ever).

3) A really annoying bug in GDE 2.16.0 that pops up when another
application crashes and wants to send a bugzilla report.  GDE claims
that 2.16.0 is too old and won't send the report.  Fortunately, that
doesn't happen too often (most often when I exit Evolution, which I
usually do only when I log out).

Most of my other quirks of operation I attribute to the fact that I
run OOo 2.4 instead of the official 2.3 (I like it better, even though
it's only 32-bit), and I run a 64-bit alpha build of SeaMonkey
(because the 32-bit release 1.1.9 keeps disappearing under certain
specific circumstances that never occur with my own builds).

I'm looking forward to 5.2, but 5.1 has been great to/for me, as was
5.0 before it.

HTH

mhr

Alfred von Campe wrote:
> I've been a big fan of CentOS for a while, and didn't have many
issues
> with CentOS 4.X over the past few years.  However, since moving to 
> CentOS 5.1 a few weeks ago, I have received more problem reports from my 
> users than in the last year and a half on CentOS 4.X.  I've previously 
> reported the problem with gnome-terminal crashing (and since there is a 
> single gnome-terminal process by default all your terminal windows 
> disappear which makes this really painful), and now I'm getting
multiple
> reports of Gnome applets suddenly quitting.  Sometimes this includes the 
> entire screen "flashing" (probably a side effect of the
"Show Desktop"
> applet exiting).  I've also had reports of some third party tools like 
> SlickEdit misbehaving and/or crashing on CentOS 5.1.
> 
> Don't get me wrong; I'm not really complaining about CentOS.  I
really
> appreciate what the CentOS team does.  I am just wondering if anyone 
> else has seen these issues.  If it was just one or two users, I would 
> suspect the hardware or some configuration issues.  But these issues 
> started cropping up after I upgraded our existing systems to CentOS 
> 5.1.  The "upgrade" was a complete reinstall via a kickstart
script (I
> reformatted all partitions/LVs except for one), and all systems are 
> configured identically.  BTW, I'm using CentOS for our desktops as well
> as our servers, and all these problems are really confined to the 
> desktop systems.  Almost everyone uses the default Gnome desktop.
> 
> So, does anyone else have the perception that CentOS 5.X (particularly 
> Gnome) is a little less stable than CentOS 4.X or is it just me?
I am not having any issues with CentOS 5 and Gnome ... I have been using 
it as my primary desktop since before the 5.0Beta stage.

I would initially start out but looking at any 3rd party installed products.

Also, if the hardware is the same, it might be something related to that 
motherboard chipset and centos-5 kernels.  I would see if you have the 
latest BIOS for the hardware as there may be APIC/ACPI issues that can 
effect kernel, udev, hald, etc.

I have zero issues here ... but I do NOT use yum-updated or any of its 
applets.

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes

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On Jun 5, 2008, at 10:23, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> I am not having any issues with CentOS 5 and Gnome ... I have been  
> using it as my primary desktop since before the 5.0Beta stage.
>
> I would initially start out but looking at any 3rd party installed  
> products.
The only 3rd party tools that are *installed* on the systems are the  
following RPMs from the RPMforge repo:

crossvc-1.5.2-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
directfb-0.9.25.1-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
directfb-devel-0.9.25.1-1.el5.rf.i386.kdiff3-0.9.92-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
meld-1.1.5-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
perl-Compress-Raw-Zlib-2.008-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
perl-Compress-Zlib-2.008-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
perl-IO-Compress-Base-2.008-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
perl-IO-Compress-Zlib-2.008-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
perl-Jcode-2.06-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
perl-Mail-Sendmail-0.79-1.2.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
perl-OLE-Storage_Lite-0.16-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
perl-Spreadsheet-ParseExcel-0.32-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
perl-Spreadsheet-WriteExcel-2.21-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
perl-Unicode-Map-0.112-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
perl-XML-Parser-2.36-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
perl-XML-Simple-2.18-1.el5.rf.noarch.rpm
rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
subversion-1.4.6-0.1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
subversion-perl-1.4.6-0.1.el5.rf.i386.rpm

None of these have actively running processes (ie.e, daemons) that  
could interfere with ongoing Gnome activity.  I do have a couple of  
3rd party tools that are installed on an automounted NFS share, but  
again, these are just user applications like an IDE and a source  
control management system that should be fairly self contained and  
not affect the Gnome Terminal process, Gnome applets, etc.
> Also, if the hardware is the same, it might be something related to  
> that motherboard chipset and centos-5 kernels.  I would see if you  
> have the latest BIOS for the hardware as there may be APIC/ACPI  
> issues that can effect kernel, udev, hald, etc.
OK, I will look into this.
> I have zero issues here ... but I do NOT use yum-updated or any of  
> its applets.
The only Gnome applets in use are the default ones: Show Desktop,  
Window List, and Workspace switcher.  I don't even have the yum- 
updatesd RPM installed.

I will try to raise these issues on a Gnome mailing list or forum to  
see if anyone has any useful insights.

Thanks,
Alfred

On Jun 5, 2008, at 10:23, Johnny Hughes wrote:
> I would initially start out but looking at any 3rd party installed  
> products.
One of our third party applications (SlickEdit) has been having its  
share of issues.  We finally had an error message (Xlib: resource ID  
allocation space exhausted) that produced an interesting Google hit:

   http://fixunix.com/xwindows/351264-core-xlib-xid-allocator.html

Here is some of the relevant information from that page:

   The problem is that right now if you don't use the Display internals,
   and override the XID allocator associated with each Display  
structure,
   the code eventually hits this in libX11 (_XAllocID()):

     if (id != 0x10000000) {
         (void) fprintf(stderr, "Xlib: resource ID allocation space  
exhausted!\n");
         id = 0x10000000;
         dpy->resource_id = id >> dpy->resource_shift;
     }

   So, if you have an application running for weeks or months that
   allocates XIDs over a period of time, for GCs, Pixmaps, etc.
   you will eventually hit that, unless you carefully replace the core
   allocator for each Display, and reuse ids.

I can't vouch for the accuracy of that information, but it does seem  
plausible and applicable to my situation.  And it appears that this  
issue did not exist in CentOS 4, or at least I did not see it until I  
upgraded to CentOS 5.1.

Alfred