I'm running into a problem where when I try to run rhythmbox, it fails and the crash kicks me back out to the login screen.
What kinds of problems can cause this effect?
I had always thought that one of the principles of the unix environment is that processes are independent of one another, so there should only be a limited kind of problems that result in the complete breakdown of my login session.
If one or more of the objects that should be on the current screen hasn't loaded properly causing Rhythmbox to crash whenever it tries to access that object, it can be solved by pressing the F5 key to refresh the screen. The problem with this method is that you don't always know when Rhythmbox is about to crash, but if something is out of the ordinary with Rhythmbox pressing the F5 key might prevent Rhythmbox from crashing. Signs to watch for are unusual screen artifacts or something in Rhythmbox that doesn't load or respond.
Another possible cause of the problem is that the Rhythmbox music library metadata might be messed up, so Rhythmbox is unable to find all the songs in the music library. This problem can be solved by deleting the entire music library from Rhythmbox and re-importing it. Make sure that you delete the music library only from Rhythmbox and not from the hard drive as well which would permanently delete all your music files.