Gnome desktop occasionally fails to function

[ratcheer]

I have one of those annoying intermittent problems. Occasionally, when I boot Sabayon 9 into the Gnome 3 gnome-shell environment, nothing on the desktop works except the mouse pointer. The Super key will not activate the application doc, and clicking on the top panel icons does nothing. I can always work around the problem by pressing the F Lock key, then Ctrl-Alt-F1, then logging in as root in the test console, then running "/etc/init.d/xdm restart". Then I have to log in again as the normal user, and then everything is working again. An alternative workaround is to reboot the system.

Does anyone have any idea what is happening and/or how to fix it?

Tim

[Johnny Who]

There are some utterly mysterious turns of events going on(LOL). However, I experienced this problem the day before yesterday. I was logged in to Mate, and suddenly I could not adjust the screen brightness. As my environment was dark, I would like to dim the screen. However, this was not possible (I don` t know why, I added the Power Manager to startup application and Logged in twice). There were more problems, such as the Mate icon changing to Gnome foot etc, but I would not like to hijack the thread. After all, I logged ot, switched to Gnome three, and experienced the same failure as you. I finall y hard reset the machine. The other morning, neither Mate, nor Gnome showed any bugs...

[ratcheer]

Ok, thanks @Johnny Who. So, it seems at least two users are having the same problem. The original question remains: Any ideas on what is happening or how to fix it?

Tim

[Johnny Who]

Probably just froze... It happens even to the best software...

[zakunin]

It happens to me too...one of the strange things in S9 with Gshell...

[Rubycon]

It happens to me too...only the mouse pointer is working.

[Gordon]

Same here. It normally happens when I switch between applications or desktops while using hotkeys (Ctrl-Alt-PgUp/PgDown or Alt-Tab). Many times also related to running VMware. The quick fix is to return to console 1 (Ctrl-Alt-F1), logon as root and restart xdm. But yes that means that all unsaved items are lost.

[Gordon]

After some experimenting with proposed "fixes" I found a way that appears to work:

Go into console mode (Ctrl-Alt-F1) and logon as root. Find and kill the process named `gnome-shell` (it requires a hard kill). When returning to GUI mode (Ctrl-Alt-F7) the desktop is restored and active.

[albfneto]

These problems can be sometimes posted in the Net, all Distros. GNOME3 and GNOME-Shell are somewhat unstable and needs rigid video requirements.
but GNOME3 is under development.