desktop background does not refresh

I'm experiencing the same problem.

Was running standard Ubuntu 17.10 with gnome. Wanted to try out openbox.
Ran 'sudo apt-get install openbox obconf'
Logged out, restarted, logged in.

Haven't spent much time on it because of the window issue.
Have noticed I also get an error box "Invalid output from pipe-menu -i lxde-applications.menu" when I pull up the right click menu and move the mouse to "Applications".

In my case it was a commented out line in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openbox-autostart

test -z $BG || $BG -solid "#303030"

I can't confirm this in a virtual machine, at least, which doesn't say all that much. With those of you who are affected, can you confirm this does *not* occur for you in a VM? If so, I'll track someone down who's still on Artful, since I'm not seeing this in Bionic (are you?). If not, then we need more clear steps on how to reproduce the problem. All I did was open up a window and move it around and all is well.

Not related to this bug, we're working on a fix for the Applications menu, @bell-steven: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openbox/+bug/1771696

This affects Bionic as well. Uncommenting the line mentioned in comment #3 fixed this for me as well.

[Expired for openbox (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

reopening after auto-close. Repeating wxl's question: can anyone confirm this happens on a physical install?

Yes, this happens on physical (non-VM, non-container) installation.

I will note that in relation to the workaround, this particular behavior is the way it is to resolve a problem reported in Debian. You can find the change in 3.6.1-5

    + Add patch to disable sets a dull gray background during startup.
      (Closes: #843231)

The issue reported is that with the background set this way, then one cannot change it or set their own background image. Does uncommenting the line re-introduce this issue?

Hello,

I have Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS installed on a laptop.
I was able to reproduce the issue "desktop background does not refresh" on open box when all of the following conditions are met:
Condition1: The line "test -z $BG || $BG -solid "#303030" from "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openbox-autostart" is commented out.
Condition2: There is no background image set.

The issue was not present when any of the 2 conditions is invalidated.
To invalidate Condition2 I used feh to set a background image.
To invalidate Condition1 I uncommented the line test -z $BG || $BG -solid "#303030" from "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openbox-autostart"

Commenting or not the line "test -z $BG || $BG -solid "#303030" from "/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openbox-autostart" did not affect in any way the ability of feh to set the desired background immage.

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

The mentioned Workaround helped me on my physical machine running Ubuntu 18.04.

Hello there. I'm in Ubuntu 19.04 at the moment and I can confirm that it has the same bug (and that the bug yields to the same fix), as do some other Debian-based distros I've tried such as Siduction and TTOS. I can't comment on Ubuntu 19.10 as I haven't used it as yet.

I just installed LUbuntu 20.04, and I am seeing symptoms from the problem described above.

To recap :
- Desktop background does not refresh, EXCEPT on desktop number 1.
- Desktop icons for launching programs are not clickable on desktops number 2-6. They work fine on desktop 1.
- Right-click on backgroud, on desktops number 1, opens what I assume is the default contextuel-menu. All the items I have tested work.
- Right-click on backgroud, on desktops number 2-6, opens what I assume is the Openbox contextuel-menu. Half of the items in that menu do not work.
- System tray and active windows/programs work fine on any desktop.

Uncommenting the line in /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openbox-autostart has had no effect.

Possible link with Bug #1804554 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/lxqt-session/+bug/1804554) ?

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 19.04 (disco) reached end-of-life on January 23, 2020.
See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and ..

Please keep comments on supported releases of Ubuntu, which currently is bionic (18.04) and a probable focal (20.04, comment #14); the prior comments on 17.10 were made whilst it was supported.

I had a quick test of this on a Lubuntu 20.04 (QA-test install pre-release which has been upgraded) logging into openbox on
hp dc7700 (c2d-e6320, 5gb, nvidia quadro nvs 290)
and could NOT replicate this issue.

Issue solved.

The problem is the system was installed above a previous one, and while / was reformated, /home was preserved. In particular, a faulty ~/.config/openbox was preserved. Renaming this directory completly solved the issue.

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better.

This issue is close to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openbox/+bug/1862756

In that bug report I could re-create the issue (#10 in 1862756) if I installed Kubuntu (18.04.4) first before adding `lubuntu-desktop` .. ie. had a messy config. If a clean install of Lubuntu was done (#12) on the same box it was not possible to re-create the issue. Thus a config issue?

Comment #16 by Agifem fits with this (messy config from prior systems), as such I'm going to mark this bug incomplete. Thank you @agifem for your findings.

If anyone believes I'm in error, please leave a comment saying why and the status can be changed back to "Confirmed".

My prior comment doesn't cover every case; lotuspsychje didn't list changes or prior configs, r-mazitis likewise makes no mention so it any, and wxl highlighted that the 1862756 was seemed related to graphics chipset.

Little detail on this report mentions graphics chipsets...

[Expired for openbox (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]