unity crashed with AttributeError in reset_unity_compiz_profile(): 'str' object has no attribute 'get_string'

Bug Description

Binary package hint: unity

1. install unity 3.8.14
2. run unity --reset
-> for people getting the crash, it shouldn't anymore (just not reset)

ProblemType: Crash
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: unity 3.6.6-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.38-7.35-generic 2.6.38
Uname: Linux 2.6.38-7-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
CompizPlugins: [core,bailer,detection,composite,opengl,compiztoolbox,decor,grid,snap,imgpng,place,move,resize,gnomecompat,vpswitch,regex,mousepoll,session,animation,wall,workarounds,expo,ezoom,staticswitcher,fade,scale]
Date: Thu Mar 17 21:48:16 2011
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/unity
InterpreterPath: /usr/bin/python2.7
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/python /usr/bin/unity --reset
ProcEnviron:
SHELL=/bin/bash
LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
LANGUAGE=en_CA:en
PythonArgs: ['/usr/bin/unity', '--reset']
SourcePackage: unity
Title: unity crashed with AttributeError in reset_unity_compiz_profile(): 'str' object has no attribute 'get_string'
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to natty on 2010年08月06日 (224 days ago)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dialout dip fax floppy fuse plugdev tape video

This crash has the same stack trace characteristics as bug #711105. However, the latter was already fixed in an earlier package version than the one in this report. This might be a regression or because the problem is in a dependent package.

Hey Anduu,

I can get a pretty easy fix for that, but this issue shouldn't happen, so, can you please try this and print the output back here:

python -c "import gconf; client = gconf.client_get_default(); current_profile_schema = client.get_schema('/apps/compizconfig-1/current_profile'); current_profile_gconfvalue = current_profile_schema.get_default_value(); print current_profile_gconfvalue; print current_profile_gconfvalue.get_string()"

(all in one line on a terminal).
Thanks!

jjl@jjl-VirtualBox:~$ python -c "import gconf; client =
gconf.client_get_default(); current_profile_schema =
client.get_schema('/apps/compizconfig-1/current_profile');
current_profile_gconfvalue = current_profile_schema.get_default_value();
print current_profile_gconfvalue; print
current_profile_gconfvalue.get_string()"
<GConfValue at 0x8848e50>
unity
jjl@jjl-VirtualBox:~$

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 1:55 PM, Didier Roche <email address hidden> wrote:

> Hey Anduu,
>
> I can get a pretty easy fix for that, but this issue shouldn't happen,
> so, can you please try this and print the output back here:
>
> python -c "import gconf; client = gconf.client_get_default();
> current_profile_schema =
> client.get_schema('/apps/compizconfig-1/current_profile');
> current_profile_gconfvalue = current_profile_schema.get_default_value();
> print current_profile_gconfvalue; print
> current_profile_gconfvalue.get_string()"
>
> (all in one line on a terminal).
> Thanks!
>
> ** Changed in: unity
> Status: Confirmed => Incomplete
>
> ** Changed in: unity (Ubuntu)
> Status: Confirmed => Incomplete
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/737320
>
> Title:
> unity crashed with AttributeError in reset_unity_compiz_profile():
> 'str' object has no attribute 'get_string'
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/737320/+subscribe
>

--
If you can't be happy naturally, be unnaturally happy.

Hey James, did you get that bug before? Do you still have it when you run unity --reset?

Seems like it can't happen with the current values you have.

The problem I have been trying to solve is I don't get the Unity left-side
dock, etc. and when I tried the unity --reset command it failed - which I
reported.

Here is the result of doing both in terminal:

jjl@jjl-VirtualBox:~$ python -c "import gconf; client =
gconf.client_get_default(); current_profile_schema =
client.get_schema('/apps/compizconfig-1/current_profile');
current_profile_gconfvalue = current_profile_schema.get_default_value();
print current_profile_gconfvalue; print
current_profile_gconfvalue.get_string()"
<GConfValue at 0x84a2e50>
unity
jjl@jjl-VirtualBox:~$ unity --reset
WARNING: Unity currently default profile, so switching to metacity while
resetting the values
unity-panel-service: no process found
Backend : gconf
Integration : true
Profile : unity
Adding plugins
Initializing core options...done
Initializing bailer options...done
Initializing detection options...done
Initializing composite options...done
compiz (opengl) - Fatal: GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap is missing
compiz (opengl) - Fatal: Software rendering detected
compiz (bailer) - Info: Ensuring a shell for your session
jjl@jjl-VirtualBox:~$ Cannot register the panel shell: there is already one
running.
jjl@jjl-VirtualBox:~$

I don't understand the "unity-panel-service" being missing but the "Fatal"
message is the "GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap" is missing.

This report was combined by someone with more familiarity (not difficult to
find!) so I can only assume it is part of the string problem.

I hope this helps.

James

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 2:45 PM, Didier Roche <email address hidden> wrote:

> Hey James, did you get that bug before? Do you still have it when you
> run unity --reset?
>
> Seems like it can't happen with the current values you have.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/737320
>
> Title:
> unity crashed with AttributeError in reset_unity_compiz_profile():
> 'str' object has no attribute 'get_string'
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/737320/+subscribe
>

--
If you can't be happy naturally, be unnaturally happy.

@James:
the issue you are showing (unity which doesn't start) isn't at all related to unity --reset. It's just that you don't have opengl support in your virtualbox.

I appreciate your letting me know what the problem is.

Here I thought I would be some help in testing the pre-release Natty, and
now I find out it can't run Unity, the basic UI in VirtualBox.

I thought that was the whole point of running pre-release systems inside
virtual environments - allowing testing without disturbing the existing
system... I should have known it was too good to be true. :-(

I'm sorry to have wasted your time with this.

James

On Tue, Mar 22, 2011 at 4:01 PM, Didier Roche <email address hidden> wrote:

> @James:
> the issue you are showing (unity which doesn't start) isn't at all related
> to unity --reset. It's just that you don't have opengl support in your
> virtualbox.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/737320
>
> Title:
> unity crashed with AttributeError in reset_unity_compiz_profile():
> 'str' object has no attribute 'get_string'
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/737320/+subscribe
>

--
If you can't be happy naturally, be unnaturally happy.

No worry James :)
Of course, all testing is really appreciated!

So, yeah, Unity has some 3D requirement to be able to run, what virtualbox doesn't provide out the box. I think you should find some thread how to install this 3D driver for virtualbox on the ubuntu forums. I didn't test this personaly.

Another option is to take the current development release iso and to put it on a usb stick and start from there. The 3D driver should be activated on it if you don't have a nvidia card and you can give all the tests (of course, it will be a little be slower) you want :)

On Wed, Mar 23, 2011 at 2:47 AM, Didier Roche <email address hidden> wrote:

> No worry James :)
> Of course, all testing is really appreciated!
>
> So, yeah, Unity has some 3D requirement to be able to run, what
> virtualbox doesn't provide out the box. I think you should find some
> thread how to install this 3D driver for virtualbox on the ubuntu
> forums. I didn't test this personaly.
>

I'll look into the possibility of installing a 3D driver in VirtualBox and
see what I can find.
If it doesn't pan out I'll give the USB method a try.
All the best,
James

>
> Another option is to take the current development release iso and to put
> it on a usb stick and start from there. The 3D driver should be
> activated on it if you don't have a nvidia card and you can give all the
> tests (of course, it will be a little be slower) you want :)
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/737320
>
> Title:
> unity crashed with AttributeError in reset_unity_compiz_profile():
> 'str' object has no attribute 'get_string'
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity/+bug/737320/+subscribe
>

--
If you can't be happy naturally, be unnaturally happy.

The problem appears to be Virtual Box related - unsupported GL.
Thanks Didier.
James

Sorry. I shouldn't have changed it to invalid - since others might be affected. I'll leave it as Incomplete - just not a problem for me.

I did not do anything but looking at the new launchbar. After ~30seconds of doing nothing I got a crash from compiz and a second later this one. Maybe I stared too intense ;-). Sorry, no idea, what might have gone wrong.

for me unity is crashing on login, so I just see an empty desktop if I choose 'ubuntu' on the login screen. While in gnome I ran the code suggested

james@ace-garp:~$ python -c "import gconf; client = gconf.client_get_default(); current_profile_schema = client.get_schema('/apps/compizconfig-1/current_profile'); current_profile_gconfvalue = current_profile_schema.get_default_value(); print current_profile_gconfvalue; print current_profile_gconfvalue.get_string()"
<GConfValue at 0xa1a5c50>
unity

Happy to try other things if it helps, I'm on an Acer Aspire One D150 netbook if that helps at all.

I'm having the same error when running unity --reset
Not running on virtual box.

rassiel@Tassadar:~$ unity --reset
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/unity", line 198, in <module>
reset_unity_compiz_profile ()
File "/usr/bin/unity", line 83, in reset_unity_compiz_profile
if current_profile_gconfvalue.get_string() == 'unity':
AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'get_string'

Hi, I have the same issue, when logged in there's only the desktop wallpaper, no sidebar nor top bar, and when issued the

unity --reset

command it terminates with the AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'get_string'

Not sure if it is relevant, but the system is a Lenovo S10e netbook with Intel GMA 950 graphics.
I am not using a virtualbox session, it is a straightforward upgrade from Ubuntu 10.10 using the update manager.

Thanks, regards.

Oh, forgot to mention that I have tried to perform an update as well, using apt-get update & apt-get upgrade. It did download and install new packages, however, after rebooting once the updates were completed this apparently did not fix the problem. The same symptoms re-appeared as mentioned, and the unity --reset command gave the same errors.

If any other testing needs to be performed, please let me know.

FYI, I performed the same upgrade, from 10.10 to 11.04 on a similar system, Lenovo S10-2, and this worked fine. The only difference is that this concerns a newer version of the S10 (S10e vs S10-2), but the specs aren't that much different. Standard Intel Atom, Intel GMA, but different design.

I run 11.04 from usb-stick and have this bug. Unity was crashing at first (bug with nvidia-173 drivers, I have geForce fx 5500) but I installed updates later. Now I can't launch Unity and 'unity --reset' gives me that "AttributeError: 'str' object has no attribute 'get_string'" thing.

I launched python script from comment #3 and it gave me that:

Traceback (most recent call last):
File "<string>", line 1, in <module>
AttributeError: 'NoneType' object has no attribute 'get_default_value'

Here's a fix to this problem:

sudo nano /usr/bin/

At line ~83, you'll find:

if current_profile_gconfvalue.get_string() == 'unity':
print "WARNING: Unity currently default profile, so switching to metacity while resetting the values"
subprocess.Popen(["metacity", "--replace"]) #TODO: check if compiz is indeed running
# wait for compiz to stop
time.sleep(2)
current_profile_gconfvalue.set_string('fooo')
current_profile_schema.set_default_value(current_profile_gconfvalue)
client.set_schema("/apps/compizconfig-1/current_profile", current_profile_schema)
# the python binding doesn't recursive-unset right
subprocess.Popen(["gconftool-2", "--recursive-unset", "/apps/compiz-1"]).communicate()

Change this to (we're just wrapping another if around it to make sure the object it's trying to use isn't the empty string we started with):

if current_profile_gconfvalue != "":
if current_profile_gconfvalue.get_string() == 'unity':
print "WARNING: Unity currently default profile, so switching to metacity while resetting the values"
subprocess.Popen(["metacity", "--replace"]) #TODO: check if compiz is indeed running
# wait for compiz to stop
time.sleep(2)
current_profile_gconfvalue.set_string('fooo')
current_profile_schema.set_default_value(current_profile_gconfvalue)
client.set_schema("/apps/compizconfig-1/current_profile", current_profile_schema)
# the python binding doesn't recursive-unset right
subprocess.Popen(["gconftool-2", "--recursive-unset", "/apps/compiz-1"]).communicate()

Then run

unity --reset

It'll all be back to normal.
Enjoy

I guess I need to correct myself on that one. I'm now able to run unity --reset to make it load, but when it first loads, I'm still not getting the launcher until I run unity.

After my fix, my version of this problem went away when I chose to login using "Ubuntu" rather than "Ubuntu Netbook Edition". Because I initially had 10.10 with Unity (netbook edition), it chose that by default.

sudo nano /usr/bin/unity

it not work:

if current_profile_gconfvalue.get_string() == 'unity':
print "WARNING: Unity currently default profile, so switching to metacity while resetting the values"
subprocess.Popen(["metacity", "--replace"]) #TODO: check if compiz is indeed running
# wait for compiz to stop
time.sleep(2)
current_profile_gconfvalue.set_string('fooo')
current_profile_schema.set_default_value(current_profile_gconfvalue)
client.set_schema("/apps/compizconfig-1/current_profile", current_profile_schema)
# the python binding doesn't recursive-unset right
subprocess.Popen(["gconftool-2", "--recursive-unset", "/apps/compiz-1"]).communicate()

it work! ( i drop get_string()):

if current_profile_gconfvalue == 'unity':
print "WARNING: Unity currently default profile, so switching to metacity while resetting the values"
subprocess.Popen(["metacity", "--replace"]) #TODO: check if compiz is indeed running
# wait for compiz to stop
time.sleep(2)
current_profile_gconfvalue.set_string('fooo')
current_profile_schema.set_default_value(current_profile_gconfvalue)
client.set_schema("/apps/compizconfig-1/current_profile", current_profile_schema)
# the python binding doesn't recursive-unset right
subprocess.Popen(["gconftool-2", "--recursive-unset", "/apps/compiz-1"]).communicate()

now unity --reset successful)

This bug was fixed in the package unity - 3.8.14-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity (3.8.14-0ubuntu1) oneiric; urgency=low

* New upstream bug-fix release.
- In a dual monitor setup with different resolutions, Unity places windows
in the "dead zone" (LP: #752098)
- Left pixel of launcher is not clickable on session start (LP: #758026)
- unity crashed with AttributeError in reset_unity_compiz_profile(): 'str'
object has no attribute 'get_string' (LP: #737320)
- unity --reset crashes with NameError (LP: #774280)
- Bottom icon on launcher tilts when it maybe shouldn't if icons fill
launcher nearly exactly (LP: #728949)
- Dodge active window - launcher should not show when modal dialog is
opened (LP: #718185)
- Unity maximizes windows that don't support resize on launch (LP: #769781)
- compiz crashed with SIGSEGV in sigc::signal_base::impl() (LP: #762801)
- inactive menus becomes brighter on sub-sequent clicks (LP: #733740)
- Unity crashes when dynamic quicklist dbusmenu contains a hidden menuitem.
(LP: #759174)
- Opening quicklist with launcher keynav returns focus to previous window
(LP: #750781)
- window's title does not fade in the right position (LP: #722178)
* debian/control:
- depends on compiz for some people upgrading (LP: #773253)
* debian/patches/01_add_scp_to_systray.patch:
- remove, upstream now
-- Didier Roche <email address hidden> 2011年5月26日 17:41:14 +0200

Accepted unity into natty-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

This bug was fixed in the package unity - 3.8.14-0ubuntu1~natty1

---------------
unity (3.8.14-0ubuntu1~natty1) natty-proposed; urgency=low

* New upstream bug-fix release.
- In a dual monitor setup with different resolutions, Unity places windows
in the "dead zone" (LP: #752098)
- Left pixel of launcher is not clickable on session start (LP: #758026)
- unity crashed with AttributeError in reset_unity_compiz_profile(): 'str'
object has no attribute 'get_string' (LP: #737320)
- unity --reset crashes with NameError (LP: #774280)
- Bottom icon on launcher tilts when it maybe shouldn't if icons fill
launcher nearly exactly (LP: #728949)
- Dodge active window - launcher should not show when modal dialog is
opened (LP: #718185)
- Unity maximizes windows that don't support resize on launch (LP: #769781)
- compiz crashed with SIGSEGV in sigc::signal_base::impl() (LP: #762801)
- inactive menus becomes brighter on sub-sequent clicks (LP: #733740)
- Unity crashes when dynamic quicklist dbusmenu contains a hidden menuitem.
(LP: #759174)
- Opening quicklist with launcher keynav returns focus to previous window
(LP: #750781)
- window's title does not fade in the right position (LP: #722178)
* debian/control:
- depends on compiz for some people upgrading (LP: #773253)
* debian/patches/01_add_scp_to_systray.patch:
- remove, upstream now
-- Didier Roche <email address hidden> 2011年5月26日 17:41:14 +0200

This bug is not fixed or has broken by a regression as of unity 4.2.0-0ubuntu2 see #809378

Said bug (bug 809378) is Fix Released now. Please, if the issue still happens, open a new bug mentioning the old ones. Thanks!