Strange Behaviour of Gnome on a Debian (Testing) Install


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Thread: Strange Behaviour of Gnome on a Debian (Testing) Install

  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jul 2002
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    New Orleans, LA USA
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    Strange Behaviour of Gnome on a Debian (Testing) Install

    I have a strange issue that has come up that I'm not really sure were to go to start pinpointing the problem. The system is a piecemeal of parts that I put together for a buddy that isn't stellar but isn't utter crap either (AMD XP 3000+, 1GB RAM, 512MB AGP 8x card, etc.). I did the basic network install of stable, changed the source to testing to get him using newer versions of software and did the update.

    After playing around with a few DMs, he choose to go with Gnome. All was good for awhile, now he has this error that I've witnessed.

    Basically once every few hours or so the computer goes into a few second berserk mode - for lack of a better description. It 'appears' as if someone was mashing alt-tab and <enter> a couple hundred times for a few seconds. All open windows flash as if being cycled through, and if at the process you had the mouse over and icon it may open that program 10x or more. After that short burst of craziness the computer runs normally for a few more hours without a hiccup. I can't seem to find anything out of the ordinary to cause the problems. Nothing out of the ordinary in top, chkrootkit from a thumb drive shows no problems.

    I would suspect hal, but it seems that would cause more frequent problems if there was a communication issue. Input is via a usb keyboard and mouse. Any ideas? Thanks.
    "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."

    -Mark Twain

  2. #2
    Join Date
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    How about your X-11 logs?
    We'll get thisright yet!

  3. #3
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    Have you tried disabling hal?

    It seems to be source to many kinds of problems. For me it (or evdev to be precise) prevents proper detection of my both game controllers at the same time and makes the one that is detected act in uncontrollable manner. (spiking and seemingly random inputs).

    For me the solution was to blacklist evdev module so i got rid of /dev/input/event interfaces. But without that X refused to work in it's default configuration (i was just left in endless boot cycle with no mouse or keyboard controls). In his great wisdom the Debian xorg package maintainer has made hal a dependancy of xorg so removing the hal alltogether isn't an option. (xorg package maintainer should look at debian guidelines to mark hal as recommended not as a hard dependency!!!) It took me a while to figure out how to disable hal in X and finally I found this http://www.larsen-b.com/Article/341.html which got my mouse and keyboard working again.

    Now everything works except my console fonts are still screwed up by hal.


    I'm somewhat sad for hal being force feeded to linux users. To me linux is about about user being in control, hal takes that away and I'd like to be able not to choose it.
    Last edited by ladoga; 01-02-2010 at 08:17 AM.
    ladoga

  4. #4
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    Jul 2002
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    New Orleans, LA USA
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    Thanks for the info. I didn't get much time to look at the box with the New Year's inebriation.... but I did find one thing in the log files that got me thinking. I'm not sitting at the box so this is going from memory...

    Log:
    Input Mouse "type" found on usb1
    Synchronization lost to device usb1
    Input Mouse "type" found on usb2
    Synchronization lost to device usb2
    Input Mouse "type" found on usb3
    Synchronization lost to device usb3
    ...

    So basically it looks like the connection was lost then reacquired on a new device for the mouse. I'm "assuming" this let a single event from the mouse translate to multiple event calls (by having one mouse have usb1, usb2, usb3, etc.). I thought maybe the connection is lose and discovered they started using a usb to ps2 adapter on the mouse. I took the adapter off and plugged directly into an open usb port. Since then I haven't replicated the error. A new problem has arisen though.

    Now at about the same intervals the mouse temporarily loses control in the sense that it will not move the pointer or respond to clicks. This usually only last a few seconds then control is returned. This is a MUCH better case than the previous insanity but still not acceptable in my book. I won't be back there for another week, so I'll see what the new logs have for me with this running. I also want to bring another usb mouse just to verify it isn't hardware causing the problem.
    "Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it's time to pause and reflect."

    -Mark Twain

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