Comment 5 for bug 438618

It depends on whether the crash only ever happens when you start your session, or if it happens when your session has been running for a while. If it is the latter, then all you need to do is "killall gnome-settings-daemon", then run a new instance with GDB (remembering "--sync --no-daemon", else it will just exit when it forks).

If it only ever happens at the start of your session, you'll have to edit /etc/xdg/autostart/gnome-settings-daemon.desktop to start it with "--sync" by appending it to the end of the Exec line. Assuming you've got Apport enabled, it will then leave a crash report which you can submit to Launchpad in the usual way.

Based on the types of crashes we're seeing submitted at the moment, you will need the following extra packages installed: gnome-settings-daemon-dbgsym libglib2.0-0-dbg libgtk2.0-0-dbg libc6-dbg libxklavier15-dbgsym libxrandr2-dbg libgnome-desktop-2-11-dbgsym libx11-6-dbg

Please install these even if using Apport, as it means that any trace you submit will likely have a lot of the symbols in already, and will minimize the amount of work that the retracer has to do and makes it more likely that your crash report will be useful

Thanks!