Bug 1010577 - Random application windows invisible after KDE updates
Summary: Random application windows invisible after KDE updates
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED EOL
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: kde-workspace
Version: 19
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Than Ngo
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2013-09-21 17:26 UTC by John Florian
Modified: 2015-02-17 17:17 UTC (History)
16 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2015-02-17 17:17:10 UTC
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description John Florian 2013-09-21 17:26:05 UTC
Description of problem:
The main thunderbird window is completely invisible.  Running from a terminal shows nothing odd.  TB appears in process list and KDE task bar.  If I r-click entry in task bar, hit More Actions, and then Move as I push my mouse around KDE shows the dimensions and positions in the corners and center of the "window" as usually would, however they are merely floating over my desktop background image ... there is nothing of TB actually showing.  If I hover over the task bar, I can see a preview of the TB window, but that's about as close as I can get.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
3.11.1-200.fc19.x86_64
thunderbird-17.0.8-1.fc19.x86_64
KDE 4.11.1

How reproducible:
100%

I will try an older kernel or two and report back my experience with those.

Comment 1 John Florian 2013-09-21 17:38:45 UTC
I've now also tried kernel-3.10.11-200.fc19.x86_64 and kernel-3.10.6-200.fc19.x86_64 and am still seeing the problem with those.  Since this problem showed up just yesterday and this same system had been very stable otherwise, I'm inclined to think that the problem must somehow be related to the KDE updates that got applied yesterday taking the box from 4.10 to 4.11.

Another observation that is weird is that even though TB appears in the task bar, when I Alt-Tab to cycle through the windows, TB is not shown as an option.

I've also tried changing the Desktop Effects advance setting for the compositing type through various OpenGL versions and XRender and also tried disabling Desktop Effects completely.  Nothing seems to help.

I'm fresh out of ideas.  Any suggestions?

Comment 2 John Florian 2013-09-21 17:48:31 UTC
Okay, I found something.  Yesterday after upgrading to KDE 4.11 I noticed that my desktop effects had been turned off, either from the upgrade or some mishap earlier.  I have my home shared over NFS and use the same KDE setup on three very different computer systems hardware wise.  When perusing the KDE desktop effects settings, several things seemed amiss so I tried the Defaults button thinking it was probably good to align my setup with mainstream since my ~/.kde dates back eons.  All seemed well and improved ... until I noticed the TB problem.

What I just found is that toggling the Qt Graphics System setting from Native to Raster seemed to rectify the invisible TB problem.  I can see it again.

Thus, I'm happy now, but I'll leave this BZ open for now in case this warrants further investigation.  I'll be happy to do any other experimenting, testing or fact gathering that's requested.

Comment 3 John Florian 2013-09-24 23:32:34 UTC
I'm also seeing this with a custom (shareable, if that would be helpful) wxPython app I've written, so I don't believe this is has anything to do with Thunderbird specifically.  Thunderbird is very sensitive to the setting for Qt Graphics System, but I cannot find any setting that makes the wxPython app visible.

Well, hold on!  I have something here that seems to fix any of these, permanently where the Desktop Effects settings no longer matter.  For both Thunderbird and my wxPython app, I have custom window rules set up.  Thinking that these might be interfering somehow I changed the rule properties (title match or window class match) so that they would never match (by adding a few garbage characters).  After applying (and IIRC, restarting the affected apps) the windows became visible again, working normally.  Furthermore, reverting my window rules back to as they were gave me the pre-KDE-upgrade behavior: window rules applied and did what they should AND the windows were visible.
 
So, it looks like KDE 4.11 (and/or 4.11.1) somehow broke custom window rules setups, but doing a little fiddling with those rules somehow fixes them.

Comment 4 Fedora End Of Life 2015-01-09 19:55:36 UTC
This message is a notice that Fedora 19 is now at end of life. Fedora 
has stopped maintaining and issuing updates for Fedora 19. It is 
Fedora's policy to close all bug reports from releases that are no 
longer maintained. Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now this bug will
be closed as EOL if it remains open with a Fedora 'version' of '19'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 19 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 5 Fedora End Of Life 2015-02-17 17:17:10 UTC
Fedora 19 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2015-01-06. Fedora 19 is
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version. If you
are unable to reopen this bug, please file a new report against the
current release. If you experience problems, please add a comment to this
bug.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.


Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.