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
Marko A. Jennings wrote:
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?
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.
As I know of several CentOS 5 machines which have no problem running Gnome, we seem to have a problem >:)
Cheers,
Ralph
On Wed, June 4, 2008 4:52 pm, Ralph Angenendt wrote:
Marko A. Jennings wrote:
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?
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.
As I know of several CentOS 5 machines which have no problem running Gnome, we seem to have a problem >:)
Are you implying that Alfred's problems might be Alfred related? ;-)
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
On Jun 4, 2008, at 16:59, William L. Maltby wrote:
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.
Actually, the hardware is mostly the same for all users (Lenovo ThinkCentre desktop towers). And it was working fine with CentOS 4.6. The kickstart scripts are mostly the same from 4.6 with adjustments for the changes in 5.X. The one new thing that I forgot to mention is that at the same time of the upgrade we switched NIS domains. The old NIS server was an old Solaris system, and the new one is integrated with Windows (I think it's using Windows Services for Unix). But I don't think a different NIS infrastructure can cause the instability I'm seeing.
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.
I really trust kickstart, so I don't think that is the issue.
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).
No mixed environment here. Everything is 32-bit. I am running the centosplus kernel because of the NFS performance issue.
Have you examined the logs for any machines that seem consistently problematic?
Yes, I have and found nothing interesting. I did have another gnome- terminal crash tonight, and I'll update the other thread shortly.
Alfred
On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 1:14 PM, Alfred von Campe alfred@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
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
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Alfred von Campe -
Johnny Hughes -
Marko A. Jennings -
MHR -
Ralph Angenendt -
William L. Maltby