Ubuntu
metacity package

Regression: metacity fails to create windows, sscrolbars, or toolbars in April 10th Synaptic upgrade

Bug #105271 reported by Eric Patton
2
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
metacity (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Medium
Ubuntu Desktop Bugs

Bug Description

Binary package hint: gnome-terminal

Whatever new Metacity upgrade was made available through Synaptic today (April10th), has completely broken it. No title bars, scroll bars, or any other window dressing is created once the xserver is up and running. FWIW, I have also upgraded to the latest kernel via Synaptic, 2.6.20.5-14.16 today as well. I am using the fglrx driver, which also had a update made available through Synaptic today.

I can't move any of the open program windows using keyboard hotkeys either (i.e., Alt+F9 and friends are broken).

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Apr 10 16:06:12 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-terminal
Package: gnome-terminal 2.18.0-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcCmdline: gnome-terminal --working-directory=
ProcCwd: /home/epatton
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
 LANG=en_CA.UTF-8
SourcePackage: gnome-terminal
Uname: Linux w5-dar-epatton 2.6.20-14-generic #2 SMP Mon Apr 2 20:37:49 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

Revision history for this message
Eric Patton (epatton-nrcan) wrote :
Revision history for this message
Eric Patton (epatton-nrcan) wrote :

Ok, I just tried reverting to an earlier kernel, 2.6.20-13.21, and I'm still getting the same problem.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Do you have anything to .xsession-errors? Does it happen if you try to run metacity to a debug login?

Revision history for this message
Eric Patton (epatton-nrcan) wrote :

There was quite a bit of noise in .xsession-errors, which I've attached.

Revision history for this message
Marnanel Thurman (marnanel) wrote :

I'm attempting to replicate this over here. We (upstream) did push the gnome-2-18 branch last night, so it could be a problem introduced there.

Revision history for this message
Eric Patton (epatton-nrcan) wrote : Re: Regression: metacity fails to create windows, scrolbars, or toolbars in April 10th Synaptic upgrade

I just rebooted into 2.6.20-14.16 recovery mode, and metacity works fine. Logging out and rebooting into the regular kernel brings back the problem.

Revision history for this message
Eric Patton (epatton-nrcan) wrote :

Ok, good progress has been made. I can launch metacity from a command line, and it works fine. So the problem is simply that the configuration info isn't being written correctly. Unfortunately I have no idea which file needs this info, but that should narrow the problem down quite a bit.

Revision history for this message
Wayne Witzke (wayne-witzke) wrote :

I had a similar problem. For me, it had to do with .gnome2/session. I had the session manager saving my session by default on logout, and I think that when I logged out with certain programs running, firefox at least, it somehow corrupted the file. Deleting .gnome2/session through a text terminal before logging in via gdm fixes the problem, and I could replicate the symptoms by logging out with firefox open and then trying to log back in via gdm, but could not replicate the problem when logging out with only a terminal open and then trying to log back in.

For a more permanent, reliable fix, I turned off automatic session saving, and now, even with firefox open, logging out and logging in via gdm function as expected, though session saving is no longer automatic.

Hope this helps.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

That could be a duplicate of bug #106350, could you read it and comment whether it looks similar to your usecase?

Revision history for this message
Eric Patton (epatton-nrcan) wrote :

Sebastien,

Yes, bug #106530 is identical to mine. I can only get metacity working again after deleting 'session' in ~/.gnome2, disabling automatic session saving under System/Preferences/Sessions, and rebooting.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

marking duplicate then

Changed in metacity:
assignee: nobody → desktop-bugs
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: Unconfirmed → Rejected
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