Bug 235452

This happens to me too on my laptop using nVidia legacy drivers.  Instead of
re-starting X, you can re-run gtk-window-decorator.

Thanks for the tip.

I had this problem with 0.3.6 too , after building a custom package from git
this no longer happens (should also not happen with 0.4.0/0.5.0)

I got this error message on the console when it happened this time:


The program 'gtk-window-decorator' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadLength (poly request too large or internal Xlib length erro'.
  (Details: serial 8709696 error_code 16 request_code 154 minor_code 34)
  (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.)

Yeah, also happens on F7, rerunning gtk-window-decorator works and for the time
being a quickly created menu shortcut for that is convenient enough, hopefully
we'll get a compiz update to the new upstream version soon enough and this'll be
fixed.

I confirm this happens also in F7.   I did happen to me in FC6.

I did a fresh install of F7 (not an upgrade), and the problem persists.  
At first, the window decorations did appear in Gnome.  Then I played with
enabling/disabling Desktop Effects on my user.   I don't know what happened, but
on the next login to Gnome, the window decorations did not appear.

So I tried DELETING all files for that user (the whole home directory, including
all Gnome config files).   I re-recreate the user.  Login again, and the window
decorations still do not show up.

So I create a completely NEW user, with a brand new home directory.   I login
with this user, and the window decorations do not show up either.   

Some investigation has revealed the following messages in .xsession-errors

----------------------------
Window manager warning: Failed to load theme "Clearlooks": Failed to find a
valid file for theme Clearlooks
Window manager warning: Failed to load theme "Simple": Failed to find a valid
file for theme Simple
Window manager error: Failed to scan themes directory: Error opening directory
'/usr/share/themes': No such file or directory
----------------------------

So I do rpm -qf /usr/share/themes and it tells me that three packages own that
directory:
  gtk2-engines-2.10.0-3.fc7
  metacity-2.18.0-2.fc7
  gtk+-1.2.10-57.fc7

Yet, the /usr/share/themes does NOT exist!!   (I am finding these facts out, as
I investigate and write this report here).   I assume that the folder must have
existed at some point, when I installed F7 brand new.

So it seems that my problem is that /usr/share/themes has been wiped out, and
now Gnome cannot find the theme for the window decorations...
If I run 'gtk-window-decorator' it cannot run.

I hope this report can help find whether compiz is messing up the
/usr/share/themes for some reason.

This bug is similar to 228644.

I will post anything else if I find a cause of this problem.

I fixed the problems in my system, although I don't know what the root cause of
the problem was in the beginning.

I removed packages gtk2-engines-2.10.0-3.fc7, metacity-2.18.0-2.fc7 and
gtk+-1.2.10-57.fc7.  Then I installed them with yum.   The /usr/share/themes
folder is back, with all its contents.   I still don't know how it disappeared
in the first place.

Although I didn't mention it in my previous comment, compiz was not working for
me either.  I found out it was due to the fact I had two different 'compiz'
binaries in my system.   To fix the problem, I simply removed the binary I
compiled myself some time ago,  and I kept the compiz rpm.    I can enable
Desktop Effect again, and it works.

However, if I login through GDM when running inside a Xnest, for instance,
compiz cannot run (because composite extentions are not present in the X session
inside Xnest).   That's fine, but then because compiz does not run, the window
decorations do not show up either.   At that point I have to either disable
desktop effects,  or login on the actual X console rather than through Xnest.

Bryan, could you reproduce this bug even after applying stuff in comment 7, please?

Unfortunately, I no longer have this system.  I have a Fedora 7 (9-27-07 Unity
Respin) system with compiz enable on one of my notebooks and I have not seen
this problem surface.  However, I would be hesitant to call this problem fixed
on account of the report in comment #6.

Sometimes I have similar problems. Although I do not know how to reproduce it. I
upgraded from fc7 to fc8.

OK, Jan, you get a month to reproduce it with F7 or F8 and attach
/var/log/Xorg.0.log and /etc/X11/xorg.conf as separate uncompressed attachments
to this bug. If you won't make, I will have to close this bug as unrepsoducible.
Thanks.

Created attachment 270001 [details]
Xorg.0.log

Created attachment 270021 [details]
xorg.conf

I haven't seen this problem for quite a while with the latest stable updates for
F7.  Has anyone else experienced this lately?  If not, I recommend closing this
BZ in a few weeks.

So, I will do.