I recently installed Fedora 9 Preview. In the past (Fedora 7 and 8), I've been setting the background image with gconftool-2. It appears that something has changed between Fedora 8 and Fedora 9 Preview. The following doesn't work anymore: /usr/bin/gconftool-2 --type string --set /desktop/gnome/background/picture_filename /path/to/some/image.jpg Note that I have the following set: gconftool-2 --type bool --set /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false Changing the picture_filename seems to work when show_desktop is true but is ignored when show_desktop is false. When show_desktop is set to false, the background image is properly loaded at login time from the picture_filename setting. However, any subsequent changes are ignored, although the last set image will be used at the next login. Thanks.
It looks like this might be related to the problem described by the editor lwn.net: http://lwn.net/Articles/278492/ It looks like when show_desktop is set to false, nautilus isn't running at all (which is probably the right thing). However, it really seems strange that nautilus would be required to set the background. It definitely used to be possible to change the background without nautilus. Thanks.
Please try gnome-settings-daemon-2.22.1-1.2008.03.26.8.fc9 * Mon May 5 2008 Matthias Clasen <mclasen> - 2.22.1-1.2008.03.26.8 - Fix background drawing without nautilus
Version gnome-settings-daemon-2.22.1-1.2008.03.26.8.fc9 isn't currently at http://mirrors.kernel.org/fedora/development/ppc/os/Packages/. I'll keep looking for it, though.
Okay, I found it on Koji. I've verified that 2.22.1-1 fixed the bug. Thanks.
Created attachment 304556 [details] root window with compositing enabled So, 2.22.1-1 fixed the bug on my ppc box, but there's still a problem on my x86_64 machine. I'm attaching a screenshot. Basically what's happening is that the image is being changed in the root window, but the screen is not being refreshed. Just before the screenshot was taken, I updated the background image several times while moving a window above. The root window was redrawn only where the moving window forced it to redraw. Thanks.
Aha! It's not about whether it's ppc or x86_64. The difference was that the one had /apps/metacity/general/compositing_manager set to true. So, if compositing is off, redrawing happens. If compositing is on, the background only redraws when forced to.
Thats an unrelated bug. Please file it against metacity.
Okay. I just filed 445563. Thanks.
gnome-settings-daemon-2.22.1-1.2008.03.26.8.fc9 has been pushed to the Fedora 9 testing repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report. If you want to test the update, you can install it with su -c 'yum --enablerepo=updates-testing update gnome-settings-daemon'. You can provide feedback for this update here: http://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/F9/FEDORA-2008-3734
Changing version to '9' as part of upcoming Fedora 9 GA. More information and reason for this action is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
gnome-settings-daemon-2.22.1-1.2008.03.26.8.fc9 has been pushed to the Fedora 9 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.