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I seem to have some issues with my ubuntu 11.10 installation.

Firstly, I cannot change the default wallpaper. The screen comes up, everything works as excepted, except that it doesn't actually make the change. Next time I open up the dialog, it is as if nothing happened. It doesn't matter if I log in using GNOME, GNOME Classic, Unity or Unity 2D.

I also installed the System Load Indicator (which shows the CPU usage, memory, network, etc, in nice mini-graphs in the top panel). However, upon the next log-in, this goes back to default settings.

Some other things I've noted:

  • If I change the UI theme to for instance Radiance, this actually changes the theme, and is saved between sessions. However, the Appearance dialog fails to recall what the current setting is, and defaults to "Ambiance".

  • [Update]: In gnome tweak tool. I've changed the Default, Document, Monospace and Window title font size. Weirdly, the only change remembered is the Window title font. If I change any of the other sizes, close the gnome-tweak-tool, re-open it, it's back to the default values, except for the Window title font.

  • [Update]: The preferences in nautilus are not stored.

If anyone knows what could be the problem, and if the two I mentioned could be related to each other, I'd be happy to investigate. Might there be a folder or file with incorrect permissions?

Thank you for taking the time to read this. I'll keep adding more observations as I find them.

Final Update

I never figured out how to resolve the issue, and eventually gave up and did a clean install. I still don't know what I did to mess it up the first time, so I can't really post and accept an answers. My suspicions is having done a manual install gtk+ and glibc-2.30.2.

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Try creating another user and logging into that user - does the same problems occur? – fossfreedom♦ Feb 18 '12 at 9:06
@fossfreedom: Great suggestion. I've now tried creating a regular account, administrator account, logging as guest user and even as root. They all failed to change the background and storing the System Load Indicator settings. So I also assume it would fail the rest. – EXIT_FAILURE Feb 18 '12 at 9:17
is this a brand new install or have you been running for some time? If its a new install - try another reinstallation - sounds like missing files especially since running as another administrator doesnt work. If you run gnome-control-center from a terminal do you see any errors being reported when choosing another wallpaper? – fossfreedom♦ Feb 18 '12 at 9:23
It is almost a brand new install (been playing around for a day setting things up, but don't know how long this issue has been present). I had to use the Alternative CD, since I'm dual booting win7 on a raid-0 setup. The <code>gnome-control-center</code> reports: ""GLib-GIO-Message: Using the 'memory' GSettings backend. Your settings will not be saved or shared with other applications."". Which indeed suggests the problems I'm having! – EXIT_FAILURE Feb 18 '12 at 9:28
see if this Q&A help... askubuntu.com/questions/35625/… – fossfreedom♦ Feb 18 '12 at 9:30
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closed as too localized by fossfreedom♦ Feb 19 '12 at 11:50

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