CORBA errors on GNOME login [SOLVED, partially]

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Thu, 2008-04-03 at 07:53 -0400, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-03-31 at 12:45 -0700, Les wrote:
> > On Mon, 2008-03-31 at 15:36 -0400, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> > > Running GNOME in fully updated F8 on a dual-core x86_64.  When I log in,
> > > several apps or applets produce pop-up error boxes with the following
> > > text:
> > > 
> > >         An error occurred while loading or saving configuration
> > >         information for <applet>. Some of your configuration settings
> > >         may not work properly.
> > > 
> > > Clicking the "details" button produces one to several occurrences of the
> > > message:
> > > 
> > >         Adding client to server's list failed, CORBA error:
> > >         IDL:omg.org/CORBA/COMM_FAILURE:1.0
> > > 
> > > This started a while back, and it would occur on the first login after
> > > boot, but subsequent logins would work fine.  More recently, it's
> > > started happening on every login.  The applets that produce the error
> > > vary, but they include
> > > 
> > > - Power Manager
> > > - gnome-terminal
> > > - Evolution's calendar/alarm app
> > > - nm-applet
> > > 
> > > and others.
> > > 
> > > Anybody have a clue what's going on?  Which component should I BZ?
> > > 
> > > TIA.
> > >         
> > > -- 
> > >                 Matthew Saltzman
> > Have you attempted to create a new user to see if a new account
> > experiences the same issue?  In my experience,
> > such failures are the result of a memory flaw, either hardware or a
> > program that is overwriting system memory some how due to a bad
> > malloc/free frame.  It need not be any of the programs you are currently
> > running, because such an error only manifests when the affected system
> > routine or memory is accessed again.
> 
> Interesting.  I ran a pass of Memtest86+ and fsck.  No errors reported
> by either utility, but the CORBA errors have not recurred.
> 
> We'll just wait and see.
> 
> Thanks for the tip.

So finally, I opened System -> Preferences -> Personal -> Sessions, and
I discovered a couple hundred krb5-auth-dialog processes.  I killed them
all (but one), and saved the session.  Now login happens much faster and
there don't seem to be CORBA errors.

Still a mystery: How did all those processes get there?

> 
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Les H
> > 
> > 
-- 
                Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs