gedit preferences locked

[nigra@…]

gedit compiles, installs and is basically functional, but changes cannot be made to the preferences. The preferences notebook has all options frozen (greyed out) except the "Plug-ins" page, which seems to allow checking and un-checking plug-ins. There were no such problems with gedit under Leopard.

[nigra@…]

Additionally, under Snow Leopard/Macports 1.8.1, gedit's file browser lists files in apparently random order (rather than alphabetically) if sorted by name. Reversing it works, it's just the reverse of the random forward order. sort by date works properly.

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

Sorting works fine here. Note that capital letters are sorted first. But I still see the problem with grayed out preferences that cannot be changed. Gedit version 2.30.3.

[nigra@…]

Replying to nigra@…:

gedit compiles, installs and is basically functional, but changes cannot be made to the preferences. The preferences notebook has all options frozen (greyed out) except the "Plug-ins" page, which seems to allow checking and un-checking plug-ins. There were no such problems with gedit under Leopard.

This *might* provide a clue: I just found out that the same preferences symptom can happen under Ubuntu (9.10 & 10.04LTS), but *only* if I open gedit from a CLI as root, but it's fine if I open it with the GUI interface, "gksu" as root. gedit v2.28.0 and v2.30.2 (I think) are in the two Ubuntu platforms I tried.

FYI: The sorting problem fixed itself a while ago with, I believe, a dependency update when updating macports and recompiling, or just one of the gedit updates. I should have updated the ticket.

[dbevans (David B. Evans)]

I can't reproduce the problem here with gedit on SL 10.6.4 x86_64 (i5). Normally this type of behavior is symptomatic of a problem with the program accessing the gconfd server, either with GConf itself or a problem with dbus. While running gedit you see something like this:

% ps ax
...
95474   ??  S      0:00.07 /opt/local/libexec/gconfd-2
...

However, this usually results in error messages to the console (when you start it from CLI), if GConf is not working.

Try setting the environment variable GEDIT_DEBUG_PREFS to get verbose debug output. This should tell you more than you wanted to know about gedit-prefences-manager and a line every time a preference is read or written.

Also to verify that GConf is installed and working correctly, try running gconf-editor which allows you to view and edit preferences settings in GConf directly. Look under path /apps/gedit-2/preferences.

Let me know if you find anything that sheds light on the situation.

By the way, running from root should screw things up as you mentioned because GConf runs as part of the user session.

[dbevans (David B. Evans)]

Oh, and I guess it goes without saying that you need to have dbus running. Make sure that you have done as the dbus port notes suggest

% port notes dbus
dbus has the following notes:
  ############################################################################
  # Startup items have been generated that will aid in
  # starting dbus with launchd. They are disabled
  # by default. Execute the following command to start them,
  # and to cause them to launch at startup:
  #
  # sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.freedesktop.dbus-system.plist
  # launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/org.freedesktop.dbus-session.plist
  ############################################################################

If all is well you should see

% ps ax | grep dbus
95394   ??  Ss     0:00.03 /opt/local/bin/dbus-daemon --system --nofork
95397   ??  S      0:00.03 /opt/local/bin/dbus-daemon --nofork --session

[nigra@…]

Right on the money devans, thanks! I ran the two dbus startup commands indicated and preferences are working. And yes, starting it with cli or checking the console indicates a problem with GConf, of course.

I'm happy, but I'd suggest you consider keeping this open because imho, dbus should have been started up by default as it (apparently) was when I was using Leopard.

[dbevans (David B. Evans)]

Once you have executed the launchctl commands once, MacPorts is configured to start dbus automatically. If you find that dbus is NOT starting after you login after this, you should file a ticket against dbus.