gdesklets won't run, python problem

python-gtk2 appears to offer gtk_recent_action_get_type:

pygtk-2.12.0/gtk/gtk-2.12.defs:(define-function gtk_recent_action_get_type
pygtk-2.12.0/gtk/gtk-2.12.defs: (c-name "gtk_recent_action_get_type")

If it's affecting multiple programs, that's probably where the problem is.

Not a bug.

I think it is. A number of programs won't run. Can you please provide me some sort of solution?

Hmmm, yeah. Christian, what makes you conclude this is not a bug?

The problem with the affected system is that _gtk.so from PyGTK is referensing to a symbol called gtk_recent_action_get_type but the dynamic linker cannot find a library containing it.

Perhaps the gtk+ installation on your system is broken? Eg, PyGTK is newer than GTK+.

Well I've tried reinstalling it but that didn't help. What else could I do?

On Sat, Oct 20, 2007 at 04:31:35PM -0000, Johan Dahlin wrote:
> Perhaps the gtk+ installation on your system is broken? Eg, PyGTK is
> newer than GTK+.

If the end-user has never compiled PyGTK or GTK+ for his computer, this
is probably an upgrade problem, right?

I've noticed lots of these problems for the last four years I've been
co-maintaining gDesklets. I also ran into the issue one time. Re-compiling
the bindings helped. My guess is, that an upgrade to a newer version wasn't
successful.

I've downloaded gdesklets off the site and compiled that but still had the same problem. As well that likely wouldn't solve the problem for any other application I've had trouble with. What do I need to recompile in order to fix it?

This very likely isn't caused by a custom version of gdesklets. Kreuger,
do you have a custom compiled version of GTK+ or PyGTK? What are your
installed versions of GTK+ and PyGTK?

Yeah I remember downloading GTK+ off their site and compiling it. I believe it was 2.10. And that seems to be the version that comes up when I look at libgtk in Synaptic too.

You should really only use distribution packages; if you compile the
software on your own you are on your own in terms of getting it working!

So I guess I'll have to remove it and switch back to the one in Ubuntu's repos. How can I remove it without removing too many applications as well?

On Mon, Oct 22, 2007 at 11:46:55PM -0000, Kreuger Burns wrote:
> So I guess I'll have to remove it and switch back to the one in Ubuntu's
> repos. How can I remove it without removing too many applications as
> well?

There is no clean way to remove your compiled GTK+, but if you installed
it into /usr/local rm is your friend. It's a bit like surgery with a
blunt object.

Once that's done, hopefully your GTK+ apps will go on using the system
installed GTK+ version. If you didn't install to /usr/local you'll
probably need to --reinstall assorted gtk+ packages.

Good luck :-) Next time don't install from source unless you know what
you're doing.

This is the first I've ever had trouble installing anything from source. I didn't know it could cause such a problem.

Well I removed it along with a bunch of applications. Reinstalled them and it still doesn't seem to be working. It seems that Gutsy has 2.12 in the repos because that's what came up again after I reinstalled it. When I ran whereis gtk it came up as /etc/gtk. When I run locate gtk it came up with a long list that I couldn't scroll through to find it. So I'm not sure what else to do.

I fixed it by running export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/lib gdesklets

It doesn't seem to fix every program though. Gedit still won't run. It ran once after doing that but it stopped working again. It says
/usr/bin/gedit: symbol lookup error: /usr/bin/gedit: undefined symbol: gtk_widget_set_tooltip_text

It's not working again and running that export thing doesn't do anything.

Ok I can get it to run using that export command but only once then I have to restart the X session to get it working again (using the export thing)

Now I deleted a few of the files that gedit was giving problems with and it works again. I also changed my gdesklets back to the one in /usr/bin instead of /usr/local/bin. It works fine however the icon doesn't stay in the tray it just seems to leave the daemon running

After recent upgrade in some python files, most programs wont run until I run that stupid export command and even then, they only run from the terminal. This is really starting to piss me off. I get a new error, that says

gksudo /usr/sbin/synaptic
gksudo: symbol lookup error: /usr/lib/libgtk-x11-2.0.so.0: undefined symbol: gdk _threads_add_idle

I can barely use my computer now.

We've already established that your problem was originated by installing
libraries from source. At this point the best advice I can give you is
to reinstall all libraries and applications from scratch, and otherwise,
reinstall the whole OS. It's unfortunate but if you choose to roll
your own then you need to be self-reliant when it comes to solving
problems on your system as noone else can actually reproduce them. I
used to be a Slackware user and learned the hard way how binary
compatibility is tricky to maintain when updating libraries.

Well I deleted those libraries and installed the ones in the repos and it's still giving me these troubles. I've already removed everything from my system I could find related to python including a lot of programs I used and reinstalled them. It did nothing. So I don't think it's just because I had built the sources myself. I've never had this problem before, compiling my own libraries otherwise I'd have avoided it. I will likely reinstall my OS if nobody else has any ideas.

Okay so I've formatted and started over. I guess you can close this?

It's been closed for a while now. I'm happy to hear you took the plunge
though -- takes guts :-)