OpenOffice query: shutdown

Derek Martin invalid at pizzashack.org
Wed Feb 16 16:49:01 EST 2005


> On Wed, Feb 16, 2005 at 08:37:51AM -0500, Kevin D. Clark wrote:
> > It looks like the thing that I want to mess with is gnome-session and
> > gnome-session-properties.  OO already has an entry in
> > gnome-session-properties under FC2.  Something must be going wrong in
> > the interaction between gnome-session logout and OO.  I'm still
> > looking into this -- OO runs under the "normal" style, but I wonder if
> > "trash" would do what I want?

My earlier comments were, I think, all too terse.

Let me say that I am in no way trying to accuse you of being
unreasonable, or to insult you in any way.  If you have taken offense
(as it seems you have), it is very likely that I have said what I
wanted to say poorly, and so you have misunderstood my intentions.  If
that's the case, then allow me to apologize.  I will attempt to
clarify my intentions, and provide some useful information about
gnome-session in the process.

You have posted a problem and asked for a specific sort of solution,
and, with respect, I'm only trying to point out that the kind of
solution you're looking for in all likelihood simply doesn't exist,
due to the natue of the problem.

I have been a gnome user for a very long time, and I'm pretty
familiar with gnome-session and what it's supposed to do.  There are
basically three main things that it attemps to do for a user:

1. Remember programs that a user is running, and start those
   programs in some specified order when a gnome session starts.
   This corresponds to the "normal" style setting in the session
   properties GUI.

2. Watch certain programs, and restart them if they are killed.
   This corresponds to the "restart" style setting in the session
   properties.

3. When the user decides to terminate their session, the session
   manager sends some sort of message to gnome-aware applications to
   tell them to clean up their act and exit.  It does this to all
   gnome-aware applications, regardless of what setting is set in
   the session properties GUI.  I believe it also tries to kill
   non-gnome-aware programs, but I am not certain if this is true.
   Presumably it would send SIGTERM to those apps, if it did, but I
   obviously don't know that for sure either.

In my experience using gnome, since the 0.something days, it's this
#3 which I have NEVER seen work reliably 100% of the time.  This is
the guy that's giving you the trouble.  There is no setting in the
gnome session properties GUI which has any affect on this behavior,
to my knowledge.  To make matters worse, it could be the session
manager which is buggy, or it could be the program itself, or both.
This is why I said the solution would come after debugging multiple
source trees...

In the gnome session properties GUI, there are two additional
settings for style.  The first is "settings", which behaves very
much like "normal" except for some subtle difference that I don't
recall exactly.  I think it has to do with the sequence in which
these programs are started; probably they are started earlier than
"normal" style programs, because those programs may depend on
settings being set to operate properly.

The second of the remaining styles is "trash" -- you said OO might
behave as you want if you use this style.  It won't -- or at least
there's no logical reason why it would.  This option is intended
only to tell the session manager that it should not remember this
program, and not start it when future sessions are started.  If
changing the style thusly does in fact change the behavior, it is
almost certainly due to a bug somewhere.

I have seen GNOME's session manager misbehave in various ways when
terminating applications after the user logs out since the beginning
of time (in GNOME terms, that is).  The only reliable way to ensure
that an application, gnome-aware or otherwise, terminates gracefully
and saves data properly has always been to use that program's
provided mechanism for exiting (and in some cases even that doesn't
work reliably! ;-).  Based on what I have seen during my many years
experience using and supporting computers, it would seem that it
remains so today.  I agree with you entirely that this should work,
and quite often it does; but in practice it just doesn't work
reliably, and in my experience no configuration setting is going to
fix that.  It doesn't even matter if the application is gnome-aware or
not.

HTH.

-- 
Derek D. Martin    http://www.pizzashack.org/   GPG Key ID: 0xDFBEAD02
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