mint theme not working right, icons changing

[Smiff2]

icons revert after logging on to different ones and the taskbar looks ugly. all menus, fonts etc look too big.
I can see MintX theme for a moment after loggin in, then icons change! (before i can open logs). nothing i can find in logs seems relevant.

doesnt matter what theme i select, it doesnt change the icons.

this happens with all new user account as well.

this started happening after i applied all mint updates i think.

frustrating, because its not just cosmetic, makes the menu very slow to load too.

this is not my machine so i'm in a bit of trouble, any suggestions would be appreciated!

[wyrdoak]

Known issues
Gnome theme failing to load
Because of a race condition between the GDM and session calls to gnome-settings-daemon, Gnome can load without a theme.

For more information you can follow this bug report.

As a workaround, you can modify /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-settings-daemon.desktop and replace 'Exec=/usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon' with 'Exec=bash -c "sleep 20; /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon"'.

Note that "20" is an arbitrary value. You might have to fine tune this value and find the one that's right for you. If the session call is too soon it will fail because the GDM one is still alive. If it occurs too late it will only theme your panel but fail to theme your desktop and nautilus. In Virtualbox we found "20" to work quite well. On real hardware this value is likely to be smaller. The slower your computer is, the higher this value is likely to be.

[Smiff2]

damn.. was it updating gnome that did this, or did gnome shipped with mint11 have same issue?
will try that fix thanks

edit:
ok not sure it worked.. bottom panel looks ok but desktop icons and nautilus still don't.

this is kind of a major bug.. need to install XFCE or some other DE?

[wyrdoak]

I think the nautilus staying ugly, IS in the update, but it's Gnome wide. Maybe next time you reboot the icons will sort themselves out.
You could also check your scree resolution to see if it's set correct.

[Smiff2]

have rebooted loads of times, doesn't help :/

screen res fine...


need to find a guide to installing another DE

OR

is it possible to rollback updates through synaptic, and if so which one to roll back please?

[SimonTS]

You've encountered another reason why I dropped back to Mint 10 (although I am currently trying out LMDE). There are just too many bugs in the Ubuntu 11.04 base and you never know what one is going to strike on what hardware setup. I know from your earlier thread that you want the latest and greatest but you may just have to accept using an older version at least until Mint 12 comes out.

[Smiff2]

this is a different machine (slower, athlonxp 2ghz 768mb ram, and it worked ok until i applied the level3 updates.
never seen this issue on the faster desktop.

i want to try rolling back some gnome parts that i updated today, can anyone advise which and how to do it safely please?

[Smiff2]

ah interesting: running that script above and then killing and restarting nautilius, fixes nautilus (and the desktop icons)

can anyone advise how to add the nautilus restart that script please

something like

Exec=bash -c "sleep 20; /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon; killall nautilus"'.


nautilus seems to restart itself
?

[Smiff2]

double post sorry

[SimonTS]

Pick one of the packages that you think may be causing a problem and run a 'sudo apt-cache policy xxx' command for that package. If an older version appears in the list that is generated then you may be able to roll-back as follows (just thinking out loud here);-
1) disable the 'update' repos or change the pin-priority
2) 'sudo apt-get install --reinstall xxx' command
Should then pull in the older version. May be a bit slow though if you have to go through the packages one-by-one

[Smiff2]

thanks i'm short of time so i'll just hack around it for now, does my script above look like it'd work?
don't want to get stuck not being able to logon..


edit:
can confirm modified script i posted above works for me. yay! onwards and upwards..

just want to say thanks to wyrdoak for knowing what's going on and his script, with my extra bit that seems to work fine.
sorry i see this was posted 3 days ago, at least i've added something to it?

few points:

1) this issue probably only shows on slower PCs.. but again, another issue that (without wishing to cause offence to anyone) suggests that not enough testing is happening somewhere along the line.
2) before you apply the mint level3 updates, i believe one of them started this (but may just be that the logon time changed after installing all those patches)
3) you're slightly slowing login by using this workaround, which is already slow on some machines (around 30 seconds from user select to usable desktop), this is a shame.

[inkheart]

Known issues
Gnome theme failing to load
Because of a race condition between the GDM and session calls to gnome-settings-daemon, Gnome can load without a theme.

For more information you can follow this bug report.

As a workaround, you can modify /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-settings-daemon.desktop and replace 'Exec=/usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon' with 'Exec=bash -c "sleep 20; /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon"'.

Note that "20" is an arbitrary value. You might have to fine tune this value and find the one that's right for you. If the session call is too soon it will fail because the GDM one is still alive. If it occurs too late it will only theme your panel but fail to theme your desktop and nautilus. In Virtualbox we found "20" to work quite well. On real hardware this value is likely to be smaller. The slower your computer is, the higher this value is likely to be.

Hi! Will this also resolve the way the panel and the apps keep on moving/changing - I mean, even if I put the panel on top, it goes back to the bottom; or the apps on the right end change positions when I turn on the computer again. If this is the solution, exactly how do I do the modification you cited?