Bug 2369567 - Critical bug in Mutter 48.3's window handling breaks mouse events
Summary: Critical bug in Mutter 48.3's window handling breaks mouse events
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED ERRATA
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: mutter
Version: 42
Hardware: All
OS: Linux
unspecified
urgent
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: GNOME SIG Unassigned
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2025-05-31 16:26 UTC by Johnny Arcitec
Modified: 2025-06-03 19:37 UTC (History)
13 users (show)

Fixed In Version: mutter-48.3-2.fc42
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2025-06-02 01:17:14 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
GNOME Gitlab GNOME mutter issues 4133 0 None opened Mutter 48.3 hides xwayland windows after any screen reconfiguration 2025-06-01 17:39:27 UTC

Description Johnny Arcitec 2025-05-31 16:26:43 UTC
Mouse clicks, cursors, hover events, resizing and other actions are broken in Mutter 48.3 in all windows that change state from "override-redirect" to normal.

It happens more frequently in applications that do a lot of window-state trickery: Chromium-based browsers, Electron-based apps, Wine windows, Steam, etc.

All users are affected, on all systems. Wayland, X11, AMD, NVIDIA, Intel, etc.

Caused by:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/commit/4d194b8e1da555c14e1dc092879e9580f25b6986

Fixed by this patch:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/4465

We should backport that patch and release it to F42-Updates stable as soon as possible, since the broken Mutter 48.3 has unfortunately been released to stable, and the bug is now affecting lots of people:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Fedora/comments/1kzyr9l/warning_critical_bug_in_gnomes_mutter_483_breaks/

Reproducible: Always

Comment 1 Fabio Valentini 2025-05-31 16:29:11 UTC
I filed a PR against the mutter package to include the upstream patch as a backport, since a 48.4 release will likely still take a while:
https://src.fedoraproject.org/rpms/mutter/pull-request/55

Comment 2 Johnny Arcitec 2025-05-31 17:47:09 UTC
We have some news now from Florian Müllner that Mutter 48.3.1 is planned soon:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/merge_requests/4469

It only includes this critical fix and a small optimization to some window dragging operation. The latter doesn't seem to fix anything and is just a code optimization.

I don't think we should wait for 48.3.1, because that will leave a time period of several more days or up to a week where users are stuck with broken Fedora desktops. So I think that we should move quickly with this patch to get the issue resolved and ensure people are happy to be using Fedora!

Comment 3 Johnny Arcitec 2025-05-31 18:31:29 UTC
Since it's likely that regular users will also be finding this thread, I'll share a oneliner command which you can use for downgrading to a working version of Mutter while you await the next, fixed Fedora package.

    sudo dnf in koji && cd $(mktemp -d) && pwd && koji download-build -a noarch -a $(uname -m) mutter-48.2-2.fc42 && sudo dnf in ./mutter-48.2-2.fc42.*.rpm ./mutter-common-48.2-2.fc42.noarch.rpm

After running the command, just reboot your machine to finish the process. You don't have to worry about the leftover /tmp files, since those are cleared on reboot.

Comment 4 Johnny Arcitec 2025-05-31 22:02:36 UTC
Status update:

- It was unfortunately discovered that the patch is incomplete. The freezing windows are fixed, but application windows can still become invisible at startup (which was the 2nd issue caused by the original bug). Therefore, the most likely action for Mutter 48.3.1 will be to revert the entire original commit that caused all the bugs.

- There's not enough time this weekend to fix the issue within Fedora's packaging repo and to do testing and approval of the new packages. By the time we'd be done with that, Mutter 48.3.1 would be out anyway. So we'll wait for Mutter's official 48.3.1 release instead.

- Users are recommended to run the command in the previous comment to fix the issue by installing Mutter 48.2. And Silverblue immutable distro users should revert to snapshot "42.20250526.0", which contains the last working version of Mutter.

Comment 5 Mateus Rodrigues Costa 2025-06-01 15:51:56 UTC
Just a heads up for Silverblue users, an alternative to downgrading to a previous commit is to instead just downgrade `mutter` and `mutter-common` via `rpm-ostree override replace` with a Bodhi or Koji link.

For example, to downgrade to 48.2-2 via the Koji link:

```
$ rpm-ostree override replace https://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=2712175
```

You just have to take care to later remove the override when the updates get into the repos with `rpm-ostree override reset`:

```
$ rpm-ostree override reset mutter mutter-common
```

Comment 6 Fedora Update System 2025-06-01 18:04:55 UTC
FEDORA-2025-b19ed403d5 (mutter-48.3-2.fc42) has been submitted as an update to Fedora 42.
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2025-b19ed403d5

Comment 7 Fedora Update System 2025-06-02 01:17:14 UTC
FEDORA-2025-b19ed403d5 (mutter-48.3-2.fc42) has been pushed to the Fedora 42 stable repository.
If problem still persists, please make note of it in this bug report.

Comment 8 Johnny Arcitec 2025-06-02 04:19:34 UTC
The issue is resolved in the new mutter-48.3-2 package, which reverts the code that caused the bugs. This approach is also the most likely course of action for the GNOME project, and given the circumstances, we decided not to delay implementation any further.

However, it will take up to 24 hours for the update to propagate to all the DNF package mirrors.

Please continue using the 48.2 package until you see the fixed package in your DNF update list.

Comment 9 Daniel Rusek 2025-06-03 14:20:46 UTC
Fedora 42, mutter-48.3-2.fc42.x86_64.

It looks like that the fix has probably created another regression and all windows on my second monitor are now minimized when switching users. I will try getting more information and details about this issue and will create a new ticket when I have more time.

Comment 10 Alexander Ploumistos 2025-06-03 17:57:57 UTC
The same issue appeared with version 47.8-1 on F41, upstream has released v47.8.1 addressing it. Could someone please take care of that update?

Comment 11 Jonas Ådahl 2025-06-03 19:28:17 UTC
(In reply to Alexander Ploumistos from comment #10)
> The same issue appeared with version 47.8-1 on F41, upstream has released
> v47.8.1 addressing it. Could someone please take care of that update?

https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2025-d21affcab1

Comment 12 Alexander Ploumistos 2025-06-03 19:37:33 UTC
(In reply to Jonas Ådahl from comment #11)
> (In reply to Alexander Ploumistos from comment #10)
> > The same issue appeared with version 47.8-1 on F41, upstream has released
> > v47.8.1 addressing it. Could someone please take care of that update?
> 
> https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2025-d21affcab1

Well, thank you so much!


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