Notify OSD panel is opaque when shown in the installer

[Brendan Donegan]

When notify-osd triggers during the install (such as when networks are detected or connected to) the panel shown is fully opaque. The border is dark grey and the centre is some random color (mainly aubergine, sometime orange, red or even blue).

The same problem is not exhibited in the live session.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: ubiquity 2.9.22
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-17.27-generic-pae 3.2.6
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-17-generic-pae i686
ApportVersion: 1.93-0ubuntu2
Architecture: i386
CasperVersion: 1.304
Date: Tue Feb 28 11:56:04 2012
InstallCmdLine: noprompt cdrom-detect/try-usb=true file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper initrd=/casper/initrd.lz quiet splash -- maybe-ubiquity
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Beta i386 (20120228)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: ubiquity
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Did you choose to "Install Ubuntu" or "Try Ubuntu" at the first screen?

[Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan)]

For this bug to occur you need to go straight to 'Install Ubuntu'. Once you're in the live session the notifications appear fine, even when running Ubiquity. I'm trying to get a screenshot but I can't find where the image files are going (they don't end up in ~/Pictures)

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

When in a live session are you getting unity 3d or unity 2d?

I'm asking because the main difference between ubiquity-dm and unity 3d is that we're using metacity and so don't have compositing.

[Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan)]

It's Unity 3D

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

confirmed with 20120301

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/942572

[David Overcash (funnylookinhat)]

This bug seems to happen for me both during the Installer and Live Session - but also post installation. I'm not sure if it has anything to do with my graphics setup - I'm on nVidia and using proprietary graphics.

[Balazs F. Ilk (ilk.balazs)]

Before yesterday I've installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS i386 on my ASUS F5N series notebook. First it was ok, as far as I can remember, but after installing nvidia-current it changed and seems the same for mee. I attached a screenshot too.

[Brendan Donegan (brendan-donegan)]

I've seen this now on a Samsung N310 with Intel Mobile Graphics (945GM I think) and also on the ARM Pandaboard.

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

This happens when a compositing window-manager is available/running when notify-osd is started... and later during the session is replaced with something that's no longer compositing windows. Because notify-osd still thinks it's running in a composited environment. Killing and restarting notify-osd, when the switch from a compositing to a non-compositing window-manager happens fixes this issue.

notify-osd used to much more dynamic in its rendering behaviour in the past, but I had to remove some of that for reasons I currently can't remember anymore.

As for the blue color... this seems to be from running notify-osd < 0.9.34. With the latest (0.9.34) release, the background tint is always correct.

[Tim Penhey (thumper)]

So Mirco, what is the best solution here? Should the installer kill notify-osd when switching window-manager? Is that a viable solution?

[Mirco Müller (macslow)]

The best solution for this is indeed to kill and restart notify-osd, when the wm is switched.

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Hmm, must be something else.
ubiquity-dm spawns its own X server, then metacity and then at some point we get notify-osd. We never switch window managers nor start anything that can do compositing.

We don't actually have any code in ubiquity spawning notify-osd, the only things we spawn are metacity and gnome-settings-daemon.

[Stéphane Graber (stgraber)]

Updated screenshot (today's daily): http://www.stgraber.org/download/ubiquitydm-osd.png

It's worth noting that ubiquity-dm spawns a standard metacity without any custom settings, which isn't true of unity-2d that starts it with its building compositor enabled. That might explain why we don't get more report of that from unity-2d users.

I understand that without compositor we can't expect it to become transparent, though maybe something can be done to improve the layout a little?

[Steve Langasek (vorlon)]

The Precise Pangolin has reached end of life, so this bug will not be fixed for that release