In fc4t2, with development xorg/gtk/gnome updated, panel and windows disappear from time to time. alt+tab shows icons for all windows opened, but after switching to a window it's not displayed. Sometimes clicking in a window makes it disappear. After some random clicks and desktop switching the normal behavior resumes, for a while. I cannot reproduce this. Once this happens, it always repeats in a session. Restarting PC solves it. Another observation: after clicking a window in window list applet sometimes it appears only after moving the mouse pointer outside of panel. When/if this happens again, what info could I gather to help debug it?
This still happens with current development updates and FC4 final is close. Increasing severity.
This will be hard to fix without being able to reproduce it. Do you have any idea what triggers it to happen?
Also, how frequently does it happen for you?
I thought it's because of applications having icons in notification area (like gaim with system tray plugin), which hide/show their windows by clicking on the icon, but I can't reproduce :( I have several programs in saved session (evolution, epiphany, gedit, gnome-terminal) on different desktops. Everything works after startup. Then I started gaim with system-tray plugin (in notification applet), all is ok. Started ed2k-gui, all ok (this has an icon in notification area too). This isn't in fedora core and uses GTK. Started valknut, all ok (this has an icon in notification area too). This isn't in fedora core and uses QT. From here on I used these and switch between desktops and windows when bug occured (the 'light' version of bug). There are two buggy behaviors: 1. When switching windows by clicking in the Window list applet, the new window with focus doesn't appear until the mouse pointer leaves the window list applet area (or the panel? I'll try this next time) 2. Besides 1, sometimes all windows and panel dissapear. I have only one panel. Window icons are still shown on ALT+tab, but they don't appear on desktop. Logout and login again fixes this. Next time it happens I'll try to reproduce what I did before bug. Do you have any suggestions what to do after the bug occured and might help with debugging? Frequency: I have 8-10 hour sessions. By the end of the day, bug is usually triggered (>75% of time).
About 1, new window will appear when mouse pointer will leave the panel, not only the window list applet.
One thing that might help understand what is going on is to see the output of xwininfo -root -tree and maybe the output of xprop on the desktop background window. You could also consider running metacity from a terminal with debug output to see if it seems to get confused at some point.
Created attachment 114357 [details] xwininfo.txt
Created attachment 114358 [details] xprop-desktop
Created attachment 114359 [details] xprop-panel
Created attachment 114360 [details] xprop-valknut xprop for "valknut" application, this seems buggy. Now on some workspaces it shows both the icon in Notification applet, but also a tab in Window list applet (nothing appears when clicking it), and on other workspaces it doesn't show none of them.
How should I run metacity with debugging output? metacity --help metacity [--sm-disable] [--sm-client-id=ID] [--sm-save-file=FILENAME] [--display=DISPLAY] [--replace] [--version] Note that running "killall metacity" will restart it with correct behaviour (including valknut which is back to normal). I should modify ~/.gnome2/session RestartCommand for metacity to include debugging in a file? What's that command? Thanks
in a terminal you can run metacity --replace >& metacity.log & metacity-message toggle-verbose disown to create a file called metacity.log with debug spew. It will fill up very quickly though.
Hello Ray, Sorry for the lack of feedback. I'm replicating this now on FC4 updated. I've found the cause to be an QT application called "valknut". However, even if it has bad code, it shouldn't affect metacity so bad? Attached is the log you required. I turned on logging before starting valknut, and then the bug appeared (the light version of it).
Created attachment 118358 [details] metacity.log
This looks like upstream #311868; could you try the attached patch in that bug and tell me the terminal output that you get?
I cannot recompile metacity. I can test a rpm for fc5 development (still happens there, the bug is triggered by starting valknut QT application at ~50% of the cases). killall metacity will bring the good behaviour back.
Do you still see this problem?
I can't reproduce this problem with valknut 3.7.0, so closing this bug. Feel free to reopen if the problem still happens.