[PLUG] Lost window manager and Gnome panel (Debian testing)

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sat, 7 Nov 2009 13:47:55 -0800
Rogan Creswick <creswick at gmail.com> dijo:

> On Sat, Nov 7, 2009 at 10:59 AM, Paul Mullen <pm at nellump.net> wrote:
> >
> > Did you accidentally pick a different session from the GDM login screen?
> > Something must be broken, somewhere.
> >
> 
> This is my best guess too.  The output of:
> 
> ps auxww
> 
> run from a terminal *just* after you login (before running metacity &
> gnome panel) could help narrow the problem down.
> 
> You can save the output to a file with >  eg:
> 
> $ ps auxww > ps-output.txt

After fiddling today I have discovered more stuff that is broken:

Clicking on Places > Home Folder gives an error message "no application
is registered to handle this file." Ditto for Places > Desktop. But
Places > Computer opens a Nautilus window from which I can display ~/
and ~/Desktop and anything else in the filesystem. Strange.

Printing is messed up. I have a lot of printer drivers installed in
Jaunty because I do book publishing. I copied /etc/cups/printers.conf
and the entire contents of /etc/cups/ppd folder from my old Jaunty
drive to the new Debian installation. I have not tried everything, but
printing to at least one of the printers works perfectly. However, just
now I tried printing to another printer and I can't get any kind of
output. I can ping the printer, and Manage Print Jobs shows the print
job normally, but nothing is coming out of the printer. Unfortunately,
the Test Page button is grayed out for all the printers. 

At the moment I need to print 250 copies of a book that I just received
from a PSU professor. This is a sort of rush job because the books have
to get to Sierra Leone no later than the end of the month. Plus I want
to print it during the current rainy days when I can't do construction
work. So I am going to put my Jaunty drive back in for a few days until
I get the print job done. 

After I get the book printed I am going to start over with Debian
testing. That is, I think I am just going to wipe the current
installation on the new hard drive and start over. I have created
nothing critical. The time I spent was mostly devoted to figuring out
how to do stuff, not actually doing it. The reinstall should go much
faster. At this point there is just too much that is messed up. I
suspect Blueman as the culprit, because all the trouble started after I
installed it.