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

[CLIFFORD ILKAY]

On Wednesday 14 March 2007, Jason Spiro wrote:
> 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?

I don't think anyone is suggesting you should work with one hand tied 
behind your back. You should use all the tools at your disposal, 
including Google. However, I think your colleague might have been 
suggesting that you can narrow in on the problem more quickly if you 
didn't waste time on wild goose chases on Google and went there with 
a purpose in mind. If you have an exact error message, that is 
sometimes useful.

> 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?

What do you have to lose? Sometimes blindly "fixing" the problem and 
not caring why it was fixed is also appropriate. You have to pick 
your battles. There are times when I spend far more time than I 
should have because I want to understand why something broke because 
I feel there might be a valuable lesson. Sometimes that's the case. 
Other times it is just a complete and disgusting waste of time.

> 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. *

Start at the most likely culprit and work your way down. The most 
likely culprit has to be one of your updated packages. Look in the 
bug tracker for the distro to see if anyone has reported something 
similar and if so, what, if any, solution there is.
-- 
Regards,

Clifford Ilkay
Dinamis Corporation
3266 Yonge Street, Suite 1419
Toronto, ON
Canada  M4N 3P6

<http://dinamis.com>
+1 416-410-3326
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