gnome help does not work

[dgermann]

Hi--

Recently upgraded from 8.04 to 10.04.

Gnome help does not work. If I click on the red life ring in the panel, it spins for a while and then nothing. If I am in a game and click f1, same thing. If I type yelp or gnome-help, I get

Could not initialize gecko!
I tried installing gecko, but that did not help. ('scuse the pun).

Any ideas?

[PabloH]

yelp seg faults for me whenever I run it. Does not matter what user.

Core was generated by `yelp'.
Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
#0 0x00007fc73f5fefc7 in ?? () from /usr/lib/librarian.so.0
(gdb) bt
#0 0x00007fc73f5fefc7 in ?? () from /usr/lib/librarian.so.0
#1 0x00007fc73f5ffbcd in ?? () from /usr/lib/librarian.so.0
#2 0x00007fc73f60011d in rrn_info_get_categories () from /usr/lib/librarian.so.0
#3 0x0000000000423d1b in ?? ()
#4 0x00007fc73f878b84 in ?? () from /lib/libglib-2.0.so.0
#5 0x00007fc73ff429ca in start_thread (arg=<value optimized out>) at pthread_create.c:300
#6 0x00007fc73e2aa72d in clone () at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/x86_64/clone.S:112
#7 0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()
(gdb) quit

[dgermann]

PabloH--

Thanks!

Anybody have any ideas how to trouble shoot this?

[BobvanderPoel]

I'm wondering if it's got something to do with my config? No idea what ... but it used to work in 10.04 then stopped. I filed a bug report (waste of time) and just figured it'd be fixed in 10.10 ... nope, in 10.10 I got my little life ring back ... but it doesn't work. If I try from a terminal I get:
bob$ yelp

(yelp:4935): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tool_button_new: assertion `icon_widget == NULL || GTK_IS_MISC (icon_widget)' failed

(yelp:4935): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance

(yelp:4935): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed

(yelp:4935): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_toolbar_insert: assertion `GTK_IS_TOOL_ITEM (item)' failed

(yelp:4935): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_tool_button_new: assertion `icon_widget == NULL || GTK_IS_MISC (icon_widget)' failed

(yelp:4935): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: invalid (NULL) pointer instance

(yelp:4935): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_signal_connect_data: assertion `G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed

(yelp:4935): Gtk-CRITICAL **: IA__gtk_toolbar_insert: assertion `GTK_IS_TOOL_ITEM (item)' failed
Segmentation fault

Which is the same (if I recall) as I got with 10.04.

So, does yelp work for anyone?

It does work if I click on <contents> from a program (like gnome terminal). I think it crashes when there is no filename (or an invalid one).

Darned annoying!

[dgermann]

BobvanderPoel--

It is working for me, since my posts. There was an upgrade shortly after those problems, I think it involved FireFox, and then it was working again.

Have you installed all offered upgrades?

Maybe a reinstall of Firefox might be in order?

Oh, and I did some messing with Firefox and apparmor. You might try reinstalling Firefox and shutting off apparmor and see if that gives any clues....

[BobvanderPoel]

BobvanderPoel--

It is working for me, since my posts. There was an upgrade shortly after those problems, I think it involved FireFox, and then it was working again.

Have you installed all offered upgrades?

Maybe a reinstall of Firefox might be in order?

Oh, and I did some messing with Firefox and apparmor. You might try reinstalling Firefox and shutting off apparmor and see if that gives any clues....

Thanks.

Yes, all updates have been installed. I upgraded from 10.04 to 10.10 ... and 10.04 was an install, not a update.

Just for reference, my yelp is 2.30.1

I don't have apparmor running.

My firefox is the latest: 3.6.12

If it's working for you, and not me, the only other thing I can think off is the locale setting:

bob$ locale
LANG=en_US.utf8
LC_CTYPE="en_US.utf8"
LC_NUMERIC="en_US.utf8"
LC_TIME="en_US.utf8"
LC_COLLATE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MONETARY="en_US.utf8"
LC_MESSAGES="en_US.utf8"
LC_PAPER="en_US.utf8"
LC_NAME="en_US.utf8"
LC_ADDRESS="en_US.utf8"
LC_TELEPHONE="en_US.utf8"
LC_MEASUREMENT="en_US.utf8"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="en_US.utf8"
LC_ALL=

Is yours different from that?

[dgermann]

BobvanderPoel--

Is yours different from that?

Nope, looks the same to me. And someone who knows that the word "different" requires "from!"

10.04 was an upgrade for me--probably about the 4th or so. I wouldn't 10.10 would have broken it.

Wish I had an answer for you. Have you tried the gnome site or some listservs for gnome users?

[BobvanderPoel]

Amazing how much time I just spent on this. finally found something at:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/yelp/+bug/664611


Some very bad parsing going on with the yelp program!

So, on my system I simply deleted the file

/usr/local/share/info/dir

which was a "stub" file for the info system. Yes, that simple delete fixed my problems! Thanks Doug for the help.

Best,

[dgermann]

BobvanderPoel--

A trivial solution to a problem that could take hours troubleshooting! Thank you for posting it here, Bob.

We could all learn from your example: when you find the answer, post it on the forum so others can find it.

I don't think I did very much to help. More hand-holding and encouraging you....

I do not have the offending file, although I do have /usr/share/info/dir

PS: You might want to mark the thread solved.

[BobvanderPoel]

BobvanderPoel--

PS: You might want to mark the thread solved.

Love to ... but you are the starter of the thread :)

[dgermann]

Bob--

Oops! So I am. I have marked the thread solved then!

Thanks for reminding me, Bob!