Gnome panel error messages

In an earlier thread on problems I was having with the Gnome panel on an ancient PC running RH 7.1, at a certain point there were errors on bootup when the panel was installing itself. This quickly degenerated into Linux becoming unbootable, even in rescue mode. Someone I know told me he had had a similar problem on his PC, but not with Gnome, and had figured out that it was due to some memory problems, whereupon he had replaced the memory.

My RH 7.1 installation CD had become defective, so I used a RH 6.3 installation CD to install RH 6.3. Later I decided to experiment with FREEDOS and installed that instead. The hardware won't support anything much more advanced than RH 7.1; e.g. it failed to install RH 9. In the last few days, I downloaded the umbc-redhat-1.1.iso Redhat 7.3 installation CD image, burned it to a CD on another machine, and used it to install RedHat 7.3 on the ancient PC mentioned above. When I booted it for the first time, I had no trouble logging in, but the panel crashed while it was installing itself on the screen, the panel being almost entirely blank before it disappeared, except for three copies of a tiny icon that I don't recognize. The message was: "Application 'panel' (process 1086) has crashed due to a bane error (Segmentation fault). See Gnome application crash page." This makes me wonder whether it is more than a coincidence that there is again a problem with the panel and whether, if it is a memory problem, whether it is possible to identify the problematic memory locations and to test them directly.

Oddly enough, I was nevertheless able to get the panel to install. I just opened a terminal window using the right mouse button and executed "panel" in it. That led to the panel installing itself correctly, but in the terminal window I failed to get a new command line; it seemed to be hanging without returning. So, I hit ctrl-C and the panel disappeared and I got my new command line, along with a lot of error messages, which I'll describe below. But, I think because panel reboots itself, after that the panel came back without complaint and seemed to be fully functional. It still had that tiny icon mentioned above, but only one copy of it and that got replaced by a red button with an exclamation point in it. I now go through this every time I boot up.

I'm somewhat curious about these error messages and I'd appreciate it if someone can explain to me what they mean and how I can examine more closely the problems they refer to. Here they are: as soon as I executed

I got this error message:

Gtk-WARNING **: gtksignaldisconnectbydata(): could not find handler containing data (0x8185FF0)

After I hit ctrl-C, I got these error messages:

** WARNING **: CORBA Exception Traceback (innermost last): File "-usr-bin-..-share-rhn-rhnapplet-rhnapplet.py", line 300, in animatehandler self.redraw() File "-usr-bin-..-share-rhn-rhnapplet-rhnapplet.py", line 364, in redraw self.refreshbgimage() File "-usr-bin-..-share-rhn-rhnapplet-rhnapplet.py", line 250, in refreshbgimage (rgb, w, h, rowstride) = self.applet.getrgbbg() File "-usr-lib-python1.5-site-packages-gnome-applet.py", line 102, in getrgbbg return applet.appletwidgetgetrgbbg(self.o) MemoryError

followed by several lines of: Gdk-WARNING **: GdkWindow 0x1800029 unexpectedly destroyed

in which 0x1800029 was replaced respectively by: 0x1800027 0x1800026 0x1800012 0x1a0001a 0x1a00006 0x1600043 0x160003f 0x160003b 0x1600037 0x1600013

I don't know whether these hexadecimal numbers refer to problematic memory locations.

This is a very old machine. I don't know enough about hardware to know whether I can find memory that can be used to replace the memory on this one. Maybe if I did, the problem would go away. However, I don't think I have a problem, since I am eventually able to get the panel to work. Instead, I think I have a machine which gives me interesting opportunities to study the inner workings of its hardware and its operating system. I just don't know how to do it. -- Ignorantly, * Disclaimer: I am a guest and *not* a member of the MIT CSAIL. My actions and * comments do not reflect in any way on MIT. Also, I am nowhere near Boston.