Hi all.

As I just told in another thread, I just reinstalled the system (Solaris Express Developer Edition 05/07). Another strange problem arised: as soon as root logs in in Gnome, then when another user tries to log in in Gnome everything incredibly slows down: the login screen with "Window manager" takes some 20 secs to go away and then "Panel" sticks there... The only option is killing X with ctrl+alt+backspce. This only happens if root logs in with Gnome, and not in CDE. If root doesn't log in, nothing strange happens.

The problem seems unrelated with the user that logs in:
- existing users which could login in Solaris 10 11/06 now have this problem
- a new user has this problem too...

Rebooting the machine and never logging in to Gnome with root "solves" the problem.

Has anyone ever had this problem?
Am I going to do a fresh reinstall...?

Thanks,
Enrico.

I know it's not addressing the root cause, but the short answer is you should never log in as root under a graphic environment anyway, whatever the O/S.

Yes I know jlliagre, that's why I didn't discover it immediately after install... I was just doing some basic directory reorganization and I logged in as root with gnome (I usually use CDE, which doesn't cause Gnome to hang). Then, logging in again with my user I noticed the problem and discovered the pattern that provokes it.

It's pretty annoying because I haven't discovered how to restore normal system function without rebooting. And more annoying to me is having a problem and not knowing why!

Thanks anyway,
Enrico.

I would guess it's related to a temporary file or device permission. You can try using dtrace or truss to locate which one(s).

Yes, maybe... I was looking to some directory manually but didn't discover anything. I never used dtrace in a real world problem and I've been looking to official documentation and it's pretty extended. Can you point me to some resource?

Thanks,
Enrico.

I was sticking with developer's guide because DTrace user guide is not available yet in Solaris Express documentation.

Here too I found some (very basic) guides http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/content/dtrace/

Let's see if we find the guilty!

Bye,
Enrico.

Being inspired by this entry in Bryan Cantrill's blog, I discovered that the system is waiting in some system call. I repetead the installation and upgrade process (3rd time...) and the problem remained. By the way, I also discovered during this process that smc, for some reason, stopped working.

I (finally) did a fresh installation of Solaris Express Dev. Ed. and now everything works fine. My first experience upgrading Solaris hasn't been satisfactory!

Thanks,
Enrico.

I've never been a fan of upgrades, no matter what the OS.

Once bitten, twice shy