FC8 with VNC and Gnome Panel Issue

[Quella]

I seem to have an issue and I was wondering if you guys here can help me out. I'm not sure if it was a change in Fedora or how VNC now works. I just did a CLEAN install of Fedora Core 8 (had in the past upgraded my machine from FC3-7); so this was a nice fresh clean install.

I have VNC running and I can get to the Gnome manager as I have made the changes to the .xstart file. The issue is that I do nto appear to get any of the Panel Items showing up even when I add them when in VNC. I tried to add something a few times and it never showed up. The strange thing is that when I went to the machine itself, I saw that multiple panels installed there. Is there a new configuration or something that I need to change to get back the way it was where I could see the panel add-ons and such. I do not even see the time or date in the top panel, but I do get the menu items.

Any help or direction would be welcomed.

Quella.

[ColonelPenguin]

Have you figured this out? I just installed vnc-server and set it up. I am having the same problem. I also get an error like this every time I log in: "The X system keyboard settings differ from your current GNOME keyboard settings." I had made one change to my keyboard settings the day I installed F8, and I haven't had any problems until I installed VNC. Tomboy doesn't load properly either. If I try to stop the vnc service, I get a bunch of error windows from Tomboy popping up all over the place. This seems like some sort of bug.

[Quella]

Thanks for the reply, but it seems that your issue may be different from mine. I seem to have issues with the toolbars not showing up when I add items or programs to the bottom. When I go down to the server itself and login under the same user, all the items are added on that screen, but not the vnc session screen. So, if I opened up many terminals from within the VNC session, It does not open or show it at the bottom as being opened. If I go to the server, there may be 3+ terminals opened (how ever many I tried) on that session. It seems that there may be issues with the way that the display is being done. I used the default F8 install (not an upgrade) as I rebuilt me box. Maybe it is a new or different configuration that needs to be done with this version of VNC. Sorry, I'm not sure I can answer yours either.

Quella

[blackcatgeek]

I have the same problem as ColonelPenguin.
Funny thing is, if I vnc to the machine, the panel is correct (default).

I have tried deleting the user account and recreating it, and it is fine at first, but after I set up vnc for the user, I run into the same problem.

Anybody have any advice? I had the problem in F7, and now the same thing in F8.

[hiberphoptik]

I would recommend ditching VNC and going with NX it works through ssh, and even over the internet it is about 95% as fast as being at the computer with full color and resolution support

just my two cents

[mattcen]

I have both the problems stated by Quella and ColonelPenguin above, and I have determined that most of the time the gnome panel problem issue can be resolved by running (As root) "init 3", waiting a few seconds, and running "init 5". This is obviously a poor solution, but it does give an indication of the problem. My interpretation of this is that there are some of the programs that X or Gnome rely on that are still running, and can only have one instance run per user at a time, and so it simply isn't starting again until you completely restart the X and Gnome systems. I am still trying to work out which programs are the issue here.
As for the keyboard issue (The X system keyboard settings differ from your current GNOME keyboard settings.) - I have no idea, but it is driving me up the wall!

Regards,
Mattcen

[Quella]

Good sleuthing Mattcen. I will do some testing myself, and if you come across anything, please let me know.

Quella

[ecvej]

I've had similar issues with VNC. Solution is not to login locally prior to logging in with the same user via vnc. As mentioned above, some apps don't seem to like being run by the same user at the same time.

[mattcen]

It appears that I have tracked the problem with the Gnome Panel back to /usr/libexec/bonobo-activation-server. I logged in to Gnome locally, and then logged out, and logged in a few times via VNC to try to replicate the problem.
When the problem occurred, I exited all my X sessions (Local and remote via VNC) and from a shell, did the following to check which processes were running:

[mattcen@laptop ~]$ ps -u mattcen u
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
mattcen   3839  0.0  0.1   8916  1576 ?        S    12:14   0:00 sshd: mattcen@pts/1
mattcen   3840  0.0  0.1   4704  1560 pts/1    Ss   12:14   0:00 -bash
mattcen   3872  0.0  0.0   4816   960 pts/1    S+   12:14   0:00 screen
mattcen   3873  0.0  0.1   5484  1656 ?        Ss   12:14   0:00 SCREEN
mattcen   3874  0.0  0.1   4704  1564 pts/2    Ss+  12:14   0:00 /bin/bash
mattcen   3902  0.0  0.1   4704  1588 pts/3    Ss   12:14   0:00 /bin/bash
mattcen   3930  0.0  0.1   4704  1568 pts/4    Ss   12:14   0:00 /bin/bash
mattcen   4246  0.0  0.0   6044   576 ?        S    12:16   0:00 /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon -d
mattcen   5898  0.0  0.2  39824  2956 ?        Ssl  12:26   0:00 /usr/libexec/bonobo-activation-server --ac-activate --ior-output-fd=16
mattcen   5954  0.0  0.0   4528   944 pts/3    R+   12:27   0:00 ps -u mattcen u

I then ran another VNC session to check that the problem was still occurring, which it was.



I then ran this command:

[mattcen@laptop ~]$ kill 5898

In order to kill the bonobo-activation-server process and then reran the VNC session, and lo and behold the problem is fixed!


I don't know what this program does yet, but I shouldn't have too much difficulty finding out. In the meantime, the temporary fix is to SSH into the computer you are VNCing into, and kill this process .

[mattcen]

OK so I did a man bonobo-activation-server and it said:

Bonobo Activation Server(1)                        Bonobo Activation Server(1)

NAME
       bonobo-activation-server - GNOME component tracker

DESCRIPTION
       This  application  tracks  information about installed components and brokers components, in conjunction with its client library; lib-
       bonobo-activation.

       It reads the component descriptions from ${prefix}/lib/bonobo/servers/*.server.  These files provide an XML description  of  a  compo-
       nents capabilities which can be queried and manipulated by clients from the client library.

       Bonobo-activation-server also ensures that the minimum neccessary number of servers for your display setup are running.

       Bonobo-activation-server  executes  all components with the environment inherited from the first process to start the server. In addi-
       tion to using your prefix, it will examine the BONOBO_ACTIVATION_PATH and the GNOME2_PATH environment variables to find .server files.

       In addition it examines an XML configuration file in ${prefix}/etc/bonobo-activation/bonobo-activation-config.xml

       For more information see http://www.gnome.org.

                                                   Bonobo Activation Server(1)

So it's a part of Gnome. And I assume that it is supposed to exit with Gnome, but isn't, so it may be a bug with the program. The question then arises, why does it only occur with VNC and not from a local X session? Perhaps the method that VNC used to end a Gnome session is different from that of X11?