How can I logically troubleshoot my Ubuntu/Gnome/(GConf?) problem? (was: Re: Troubleshooting without help from others)

[Jason Spiro]

2007/3/14, Zbigniew Koziol <softquake-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
[snip]
> I can repeat my original thesis: error
> messages produced by xine (and many other software) are so often meaningless
> and confussing. While the audience around (I mean on the arena that is
> catched up by Google) has mostly no idea what they are talking about.

Yeah, error messages are too often an afterthought. They elaborate
more on that fact and on the costs of providing tech support about bad
error messages at:

http://www.stc-sf.org/docs/non-fatalerrors.ppt

HTML format: http://google.com/search?q=cache:www.stc-sf.org/docs/non-fatalerrors.ppt

Btw, Rob, Clifford, thanks for your input :-) I plan to try to do
logical troubleshooting and deduction more often when I can, instead
of just escaping to Google.

Which reminds me: I have been using Ubuntu Edgy for a few months.  I
suspect it started after a recent software update a few weeks ago. (So
now I sorta regret that I clicked on the option to grab the update.
:-) )  First, the slow-keys (bounce-keys?) accessibility feature
enabled itself, I don't think I requested it.  Then I disabled it.
Then other problems started.  For all users on my laptop:

- I get an error message at startup "GConf schema installer error,
battery_low_percentage cannot be zero".
- Most Gnome keyboard shortcuts stopped working, such as Alt-Tab and
(more recently) Alt+F2 to run apps.
- And no taskbar buttons appear anymore on the bottom panel; I can't
re-add the normal window list though I can add a vertical window
selector.
- All root-needing apps on the Gnome menus seem to run gksu instead of
gksudo.  Gksu, of course, doesn't work for me, as I haven't set a root
password.
- Weird things have changed with the Gnome panel
- Maybe there are other symptoms, too.  I unfortunately have not kept
a log of all symptoms.

How can I troubleshoot this without using Google?  Is it a bad idea to
dist-upgrade again (there are new updates available again) to see if
that fixes it, before trying other things?

Other things I guess I could look into:

- to try to downgrade to original Edgy as shipped, probably by
downloading an Edgy ISO and apt-cdrom adding it then removing my other
apt sources then doing a dist-upgrade

- i could look more into how GConf works, then look at my system-wide
GConf tree, if such a tree exists, and compare it with one on a Ubuntu
LiveCD

* Note: Even if you know the answer (I don't), I would appreciate it
if you did not tell me how to fix the problem, but instead how to
troubleshoot it and track it down to the cause. *

Cheers,
Jason

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