gnome-appearance-properties starts with huge width (something like 20000)
and therfore fails to launch properly, if at all. This happened after I
started to customise my desktop appearance, but the problem remains if I
revert to the default styles.
Temporary fix: call gnome-appearance-properties -p 1 and it comes back
to normal for a while.
(gnome-appearance-properties:15717): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_new: assertion `width > 0' failed
(gnome-appearance-properties:15717): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_scale_simple: assertion `GDK_IS_PIXBUF (src)' failed
(gnome-appearance-properties:15717): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
(gnome-appearance-properties:15717): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_new: assertion `width > 0' failed
(gnome-appearance-properties:15717): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_scale_simple: assertion `GDK_IS_PIXBUF (src)' failed
(gnome-appearance-properties:15717): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed
(gnome-appearance-properties:15717): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_get_width: assertion `GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)' failed
(gnome-appearance-properties:15717): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_get_height: assertion `GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)' failed
(gnome-appearance-properties:15717): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_get_width: assertion `GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)' failed
(gnome-appearance-properties:15717): GdkPixbuf-CRITICAL **: gdk_pixbuf_get_height: assertion `GDK_IS_PIXBUF (pixbuf)' failed
The program 'gnome-appearance-properties' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)'.
(Details: serial 309 error_code 11 request_code 53 minor_code 0)
(Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)
I attach a screen capture and the output of strace.