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[Seif Lotfy <660307@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

** Also affects: zeitgeist
   Importance: Undecided
       Status: New

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zeitgeist fails to run if its database structure is not complete
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/660307
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Status in Zeitgeist Framework: New
Status in “zeitgeist” package in Ubuntu: New

Bug description:
Binary package hint: zeitgeist

If zeitgeist's database (~/.local/share/zeitgeist/activity.sqlite) is incomplete, eg missing the events table, zeitgeist fails to run. And because the GUI does not report that zeitgeist faiiled to run, applications that rely on zeitgeist simply fail to work without any relevant reason given.

I ran into this problem on upgrading an installation from Ubuntu 10.04 to 10.10. After the upgrade, the dockbarx applet failed to run. The error message from gnome-panel just said it had failed to run, and .xsession-errors said the child process did not report any specific error. Running in debug mode (ie with the command "dockbarx-factory.py run-in-window") gave:

ERROR:dbus.proxies:Introspect error on :1.134:/org/gnome/zeitgeist/log/activity: dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.NoReply: Message did not receive a reply (timeout by message bus)
DEBUG:dbus.proxies:Executing introspect queue due to error
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/dockbarx_factory.py", line 26, in <module>
    import dockbarx.dockbar
...
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/dbus/proxies.py", line 140, in __call__
    **keywords)
  File "/usr/lib/pymodules/python2.6/dbus/connection.py", line 620, in call_blocking
    message, timeout)
dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name :1.134 was not provided by any .service files

The error appeared to be a dbus error, but in fact was a problem with zeitgeist, which was failing to run because its database apparently was corrupted during the upgrade. I fixed the problem (eventually) by deleting the zeitgeist database file and restarting the zeitgeist-daemon manually.


What I would expect to happen is:

1) The GUI should report that zeitgeist has failed to run.

2) Better yet, zeitgeist could create the necessary tables if its database is invalid or perhaps backup the old database and create a new one so it can run properly.

It would of course be nice if dockbarx reported better error information, but since there are other applications that depend on zeitgeist, it would be good if zeitgeist could recover from this situation.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.10
Package: zeitgeist 0.5.2-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.35-22.34-generic 2.6.35.4
Uname: Linux 2.6.35-22-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Thu Oct 14 11:52:41 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.10 "Maverick Meerkat" - Alpha i386 (20100602.2)
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: zeitgeist