I've got two users reporting the same issue on two completely different RHEL5 workstations. Both have multiple terminal windows open and without warning or any type of error message, all terminal windows close. X is not resetting and programs like Firefox, Thunderbird, and Matlab remain functional without any issues. The terminals just vanish. After some testing, if the user has any xterms open, they also work fine.

I've searched the log files and cannot find any reference to any type of error occurring when the terminals closed.

I'm out of ideas as to where to look next. Any ideas would be appreciated!

Thanks

This seems ambiguous to me. Do you mean to say the problem affects GNOME Terminal but not xterm?

Yep. I had the user keep working in terminal windows but also keep a couple xterms open just to see what happens and when the gnome terminal windows disappeared, the xterms stayed functional. I should also point out that it's really random when the gnome terminals vanish. It does not seem to conform to any set time of day. It happens roughly once every day or so. Makes it hard to diagnose since reproducing the problem is next to impossible.

Next time, from xterm fire up GNOME Terminal. You may see some chatter in the xterm (parent) window when GNOME Terminal vanishes again.

Will do! I'll see how it goes.

thanks

It's still happening and nothing appears in any logs. This is highly frustrating.

I've got 40 RHEL 5 systems loaded the same exact way and only 2 are showing this behavior. The two systems are also completely different in terms of hardware so I'm at a loss as to why it's so random and isolated to these two systems. Any ideas on this would be appreciated.

Thanks

an I take it you have cleaned the dust out of those two boxes , checked the drives for errors - or failing , checked the system ram ,...cpu fan ,... lose cables ...

I'm confident that it's not a hardware issue...I'd guess that if it was hardware, it would manafest as more than just the gnome-terminal crashing....The log files or dmesg would imply something. All other aspects of the system are fine.

Try dumping their GNOME profiles and starting with a clean slate?

$ mv ~/.gnome2 ~/.gnome2.BAD

(I don't know if .gnome2 is correct, as I don't use GNOME. But you get the idea.)

If that doesn't work out, IMO the next step would be launching GNOME Terminal from xterm and watching the system calls (with strace). Compare a good session with a crashed session.

there should be a .gnome and a .gnome2 file

Already tried resetting all the gnome settings. Still a no-go.

Right now I'm running "gdb gnome-terminal" from an xterm and waiting for it to bomb. Will try strace next.

Keep the ideas coming everyone, I'll take any and all advice on this one!

cheers