gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with status 256

[LittleKoy]

Hello, I'm using Intrepid right now, but I don't think this is actually version-related. When I try to start Gnome, an error message pops up ans says that "gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with status 256"
Lxde runs fine, but several programs (firefox, any gnome program, etc) shows an error about the configuration.

I already tried doing

sudo apt-get remove gconf2 gconf2-common

sudo rm -rf /etc/gconf

(after doing a backup)

sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

but nothing changed. I read on launchpad (googling I found 1 result!!!) that a guy solved coping /etc/gconf from another installation.

[LittleKoy]

Updates:

if I launch it from terminal, I get an alert message:

Please contact your system administrator to resolve the following problem:
No configuration sources in the configuration file "/etc/gconf/2/path"; this means that preferences and other settings can't be saved. Error reading the file: Failed: Couldn't open path file `/etc/gconf/2/path': No such file or directory

and on the terminal:

Failed to load addresses to delete locks

[roadrun777]

I have the exact same problem on boot up. What are you loading in a terminal to get the error code?

I tried loading gconf-configure but it doesn't spit any error codes out.

I just get the "gconf-sanity-check-2 exited with status 256" when it first loads the desktop.

There doesn't seem to be anything in the log files about the error, so I don't really know where to go from here.

Btw, I am testing Intrepid.

[roadrun777]

Ok I solved this one by changing the permissions on one of the XML files in the /etc/gconf folder. I can't find the original text so I don't know which file it was.
The file was the only one lacking group/other read/execute attributes. All the rest of the XML files had these attributes.

[True]

If anyone still has this issue it appears that this resolves it:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.system

Thanks roadrun777 for pointing the way..

[Vadi]

Also try:

mkdir -p /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.system; chmod 755 /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.system

marv on #gnome suggested to try that.

[cjsteele]

Excellent! This solved the issue in Karmic testing too! Thanks guys.

[rccn]

Apparently, this can also happen if the permissions of /home/USERNAME are wrong. I had to change the owner of this directory to myself to make it work.

sudo chmod -Rc USERNAME:USERNAME /home/USERNAME

[cjsteele]

Apparently, this can also happen if the permissions of /home/USERNAME are wrong. I had to change the owner of this directory to myself to make it work.

sudo chmod -Rc USERNAME:USERNAME /home/USERNAME

I'd use caution before executing that command because there are pleanty of instances in which that would do horrible things to my system. So, just a word to the wise.... make sure you know what you're doing before you do that.

[lecoeus]

Let me share with everyone how I solved this problem. I started getting the gconf-sanity-check-2 fail at the startup when I upgraded from Jaunty to Karmic RC. sudo chmod 755'ing /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.system did not solve the problem, but I then did

sudo chmod 755 /etc/gconf/gconf.xml.*

and the problem was gone. It seems the upgrade somehow changed the permissions of all 3 of the xml folders in there and you have got to change them all back to 755.

sudo chmod -Rc USERNAME:USERNAME /home/USERNAME

This seems a little dangerous.