evolution 1.4 crashes upon options menu (segmentation fault)
 

Hi everybody,
I recently converted to Linux OS (Mandrake 10.0) after I was fed up with the Microsoft junk software and its worm problem, not to mention SP 2 which turned out to be a joke.
However, I understand that switching to a new OS is not trivial and I am encountering some problems getting around in this new environment. Which makes me feel kind of helpless since I am no computer pro and don't intend to become one (due to lack of time).
My most severe problem concerns evolution which is a great program. At the beginning I had problems with gconf related to lacking access to some IOR -file which prevented to start any program associated with gnome (I think). However, I took care of that by deleting some folder and the prog run just great. Currently, I am experiencing another problem. Evolution (1.4) runs stable as long as I don't access the options menu. When I do access it I get an error message stating that a severe problem occurred (segmentation fault) and evolution crashes. I assume that this fault is related to a change I made in the options menu. Before that I did access options without problems. The last thing I did before the error occurred was to add a news feed.

Does anybody know how I can redo my last change? Or what the problem might be? (What is a segmentation fault anyways?)

I appreciate any help, when replying please keep in mind that I am a total beginner.

Thanks,

Rob

This thread will explain what a segmentation fault is.
I think your problem is probably to do with the folder/file you removed.
I don't know if this'll solve your problem, but it's worth a shot.
In your home directory there's an Evolution folder. This has all your Evolution settings in it. Backup the contents of this folder to another folder but don't name the new folder evolution - call it something entirely different. Then, delete the evolution folder in your home directory. Log out of that session, then log straight back in again. When you start evolution for the first time in the new session, it'll build another settings folder, try opening the options with the new folder and see what happens. If this doesn't work, delete the contents of the new evo folder and replace with your backup, then log out, login again and restart evolution and it should be back to the way it was before you did anything.

If this doesn't solve your problem, you'll probably have to re-install Evolution from your CD's.

Just as an aside, I never could get Evolution to work 100% with Mandy 10.0 (for me it used to crash either when I tried to open it or when I closed it). I use Mozilla messenger/address book now (this is also on your CD's) and it's worked faultlessly since I installed it.

EDIT Link fixed.

Thanks for the link.
I don't think the previous problem relates to this one. The problem I had before was related to the IOR file located in /tmp//gconfd-USERNAME/lock/ . Any gnome program was unable to start because it could not access the IOR file. Actually the file didn't exist. After deleting my gconfd-USERNAME folder, evolution 1.4. could be started. Later I checked the /tmp folder and the gconfd-USERNAME had been created again including the needed IOR file. I was told the IOR file restricts access to programs such that only one user can access the program. After this procedure evolution worked fine w/o problems until I made changes in hte settings menu (namely the rdf-feed).

By the way I found a way editing the rdf-feeds without the GUI. The settings are located in following folder /home/USERNAME/.gconf/apps/evolution/summary/rdf/gconf.xml

After having undone my changes, the problem remained and I evolution still crashes upon accessing the settings menu. To solve the problem I thought about upgrading to evolution 2.0, maybe upgrading fixes the problem. But unfortunately I don't know how to upgrade it ;)
I tried to upgrade it by the help of the Mandrake control center (this way I upgraded OpenOffice) but the needed packages are not available. Does this mean that I have to uninstall evolution 1.4. and reinstall the 2.0. version? How do I do this?

error report
 

while browsing through my /home/USERNAME folder I made an interessting finding. The file .xsession-errors listed the problem related to the crashes.

(evolution:3570): evolution-executive-summary-WARNING **: Invalid URL: * http://www.ftd.de/static/ticker/ftd-topnews.rdf

(evolution:3570): SOUP-CRITICAL **: file soup-context.c: line 221 (soup_context_unref): assertion `ctx != NULL' failed
QClipboard::setData: Cannot set X11 selection owner for PRIMARY

(evolution:3570): Bonobo-CRITICAL **: file bonobo-event-source.c: line 376 (bonobo_event_source_client_remove_listener): assertion `object != CORBA_OBJECT_NIL' failed

I fixed the first problem. The second error message refers to QClipboard which is responsible for the copy and paste of data across applications on the X Window system. But how do I set the selection owner and where? I also don't know what to do about the others.
Does anybody has some ideas?