Black border in the notifications when effects are turned off

This happens for me too, but with an NVidia card with proprietary drivers, and effects turned on.

You're not running compiz according to that screenshot you've attached. Could you retry this with compiz running and see if it still happens. There's nothing in notify-osd that changed this cycle, rendering-wise, so I'm predicting a regression in the wm (metacity).

@ Robert: I've not seen this yet on my nvidia-based system (also running comipz). Do you get this rendering-error constantly or only occasionally? Anything you perhaps doing that can force/reproduce it in a predictable manner?

Well when I activate Compiz the notification gets the black parts cutted. I also see this issue when starting Ubuntu with a low graphics mode.

Also seeing this with the nouveau driver and metacity.

Sorry, forgot: this happens always, with every notification.

This has something to do with the xorg-edgers PPA (note, that also the bug reporter used it).

This is a problem when pixman 0.20 is used which will be pulled into natty in the not too distant future, the bug started manifesting at least as far back as 0.19.6.

It also has problems as seen in this image when compiz is used.

This has been bisected down to this commit in pixman where the problems with notify-osd started

http://cgit.freedesktop.org/pixman/commit/?id=1cc750ed92a936d84b47cac696aaffd226e1c02e

I bisected it. It seems the composite operation is being thrown out by pixman due to some problem with the source surface.
The backtrace when that happens is this:

(gdb) bt
#0 do_composite (op=<value optimised out>, src=<value optimised out>, mask=0x0, dest=<value optimised out>, src_x=<value optimised out>, src_y=<value optimised out>, mask_x=352,
    mask_y=0, dest_x=352, dest_y=0, width=20, height=61) at pixman.c:882
#1 pixman_image_composite32 (op=<value optimised out>, src=<value optimised out>, mask=0x0, dest=<value optimised out>, src_x=<value optimised out>, src_y=<value optimised out>,
    mask_x=352, mask_y=0, dest_x=352, dest_y=0, width=20, height=61) at pixman.c:983
#2 0x00007ffff60d5ad3 in _composite_boxes (dst=0x748b10, op=<value optimised out>, src=<value optimised out>, boxes=<value optimised out>, antialias=<value optimised out>,
    extents=<value optimised out>, clip=0x0) at /build/buildd/cairo-1.10.0/src/cairo-image-surface.c:2976
#3 _clip_and_composite_boxes (dst=0x748b10, op=<value optimised out>, src=<value optimised out>, boxes=<value optimised out>, antialias=<value optimised out>,
    extents=<value optimised out>, clip=0x0) at /build/buildd/cairo-1.10.0/src/cairo-image-surface.c:3015
#4 0x00007ffff60d685b in _cairo_image_surface_paint (abstract_surface=0x748b10, op=CAIRO_OPERATOR_OVER, source=0x7fffffffd3e0, clip=0x0)
    at /build/buildd/cairo-1.10.0/src/cairo-image-surface.c:3269
#5 0x00007ffff60f4657 in _cairo_surface_paint (surface=0x748b10, op=CAIRO_OPERATOR_OVER, source=0x7fffffffd3e0, clip=0x7fffffffd4e0)
    at /build/buildd/cairo-1.10.0/src/cairo-surface.c:2022
#6 0x00007ffff60cc222 in _cairo_gstate_paint (gstate=0x7ffff63628d0) at /build/buildd/cairo-1.10.0/src/cairo-gstate.c:1049
#7 0x00007ffff60c35d4 in cairo_paint (cr=0x7ffff63628a0) at /build/buildd/cairo-1.10.0/src/cairo.c:2227
#8 0x00007ffff60c36c8 in cairo_paint_with_alpha (cr=0x7ffff63628a0, alpha=-4294966924) at /build/buildd/cairo-1.10.0/src/cairo.c:2255
#9 0x00000000004215c8 in _pad_paint ()
#10 0x00000000004219e1 in tile_paint_with_padding ()
#11 0x0000000000412db1 in _refresh_background ()
#12 0x00000000004138a9 in bubble_recalc_size ()
#13 0x000000000041d5e9 in stack_notify_handler ()
#14 0x000000000041c126 in dbus_glib_marshal_stack_VOID__STRING_UINT_STRING_STRING_STRING_BOXED_BOXED_INT_POINTER ()
#15 0x00007ffff7707fef in invoke_object_method (object=<value optimised out>, object_info=<value optimised out>, method=0x429ca0, connection=<value optimised out>,
    message=<value optimised out>) at dbus-gobject.c:1724
#16 0x00007ffff77084bd in object_registration_message (connection=<value optimised out>, message=<value optimised out>, user_data=<value optimised out>) at dbus-gobject.c:1944
#17 0x00007ffff74d5dde in ?? () from /lib/libdbus-1.so.3
#18 0x00007ffff74c948c in dbus_connection_dispatch () from /lib/libdbus-1.so.3
#19 0x00007ffff7704a45 in message_queue_dispatch (source=<value optimised out>, callback=<value optimised out>, user_data=<value optimised out>) at dbus-gmain.c:101
#20 0x00007ffff576f342 in g_main_dispatch (context=0x66f0c0) at /build/buildd/glib2.0-2.26.1/glib/gmain.c:2149
#21 g_main_context_dispatch (cont...

I've found a fix for this bug, will post a patch shortly

https://code.launchpad.net/~pcjc2/notify-osd/fix_dropshadow

Thanks for tracking this down! I'll devote the upcoming weekend for working on a number of pending patches to notify-osd.

Dupe of https://bugs.launchpad.net/notify-osd/+bug/670785 (or the other way round)?

This bug was fixed in the package notify-osd - 0.9.30-0ubuntu1

---------------
notify-osd (0.9.30-0ubuntu1) natty; urgency=low

  * New upstream release
    - multi-monitor related fixes for correctly positioning the
      notification-bubbles
    - Notification borders are cut off on the right bottom side (LP: #724842)
    - Two notification bubbles at the same time (LP: #559109)
    - Fallback alert has leftmost button as default (LP: #353843)
    - should build without GTK deprecation (LP: #655232)
    - Black border in the notifications when effects are turned
      off (LP: #654921)
    - Notify-osd needs to pause the timer during mouse-over (LP: #500663)
 -- Ken VanDine <email address hidden> Fri, 25 Feb 2011 10:04:57 -0500