Garbage written to state file, causing slow UI

I found a relatively simple workaround:

  STATE=/var/lib/lightdm/.cache/unity-greeter/state
  sudo rm -f $STATE
  echo | sudo tee $STATE

This creates an empty state file owned by root which unity-greeter (running as the lightdm user) cannot overwrite and therefore cannot corrupt. It means the greeter no longer preselects the user who logged in last, but for some people that's a price worth paying. It also provides an easy way to test the bahaviour of unity-greeter to identify what is causing a particular slowdown.

However, the real problem still needs to be fixed and (hopefully) an SRU (stable release update) submitted for 12.04.

I think Michael found a solution to this

Using 3D acceleration and the official ATi GPU drivers fixes the LightDM problem, as well. But a problem is that once those drivers are installed, then the exact same thing happens to Unity that happened to LightDM before... Slow responses and slow graphics

It's been 4 weeks since Michael's fix for this was merged into trunk. Any chance this bug report could be updated?

Even better, could an SRU be made?

1. It looks like the fix could be cherry-picked easily from trunk

2. The impact on users is significant:
      - serious performance degradation on low-end systems
      - potential security implications of dumping memory to a disk file

LightDM has too many flaws. GDM needs to be made the Ubuntu default once more until the development team gets things straightened out with LightDM.

@Jeb: that's not an user forum, you are free to use gdm if you like

Hey Michael, do you think we could SRU that fix for the LTS .1?

I found the problem causing most, if not all of the mouse problems on LightDM: The Ambiance and/or Radiance themes. To fix the problem, install the Ubuntu Tweak PPA "ppa:tualatrix/ppa", install Ubuntu Tweak, and go to Ubuntu Tweak<Tweaks<Login Settings. Change the GTK theme to something else besides Ambiance or Radiance. A good, solid choice may be Adwaita.

Hope this solved all of your problems :)

*edit: Choose Adwaita as the GTK theme. No others work.

is the issue happening only in the greeter? the same theme is used for the session...

The attachment "Untitled.png" of this bug report has been identified as being a patch. The ubuntu-reviewers team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review the patch. In the event that this is in fact not a patch you can resolve this situation by removing the tag 'patch' from the bug report and editing the attachment so that it is not flagged as a patch. Additionally, if you are member of the ubuntu-reviewers team please also unsubscribe the team from this bug report.

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Please note that if a different greeter theme is used in LightDM, the lag issue also stops. Unity-Greeter needs to be handled by LightDM as a .conf file, not through the other stuff 12.04 currently has to control configuration. Every LightDM greeter I use that is controlled by a .conf file works perfectly fine, with no errors.

Text patch created:

Hello Neil, or anyone else affected,

Accepted unity-greeter into precise-proposed. The package will build now and be available at http://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/unity-greeter/0.2.8-0ubuntu1.2 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please change the bug tag from verification-needed to verification-done. If it does not, change the tag to verification-failed. In either case, details of your testing will help us make a better decision.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance!

I followed the steps of the test case described in the bug description and I confirm that the proposed package resolves this issue.

The verification of this Stable Release Update has completed successfully and the package has now been released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regresssions.

This bug was fixed in the package unity-greeter - 0.2.8-0ubuntu1.2

---------------
unity-greeter (0.2.8-0ubuntu1.2) precise-proposed; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/state-file-garbage.patch:
    - Don't write garbage to the state file (LP: #1005642)
 -- Robert Ancell <email address hidden> Thu, 26 Jul 2012 15:32:35 +0200

This bug does not appear to related to light-themes, marking bugtask Invalid.