Apport dialogs on startup have poor usability

[Marius Gedminas]

Today I installed a mainline kernel for testing an unrelated bug and rebooted. On login apport popped up a non-localized error dialog. About a minute or two later apport popped up a second error dialog, this time it was translated to my desktop language (Lithuanian).

These dialogs are elusive: I cannot focus them with Alt-Tab, and they don't show up in GNOME Shell's Overview. If I open a large window (such as a maximized web browser), I can easily forget about them, because there's practically no way to focus them, short of moving all the other windows to a different workspace.

They're also annoyingly useless: when I click 'Report a problem...', I'm prompted for my password (once for each dialog). And then nothing happens at all.

Also, I see only one recent crash report in /var/crash, which means I'm getting two popups for a single crash:

    $ LC_ALL=C ls -lrt /var/crash
    total 756
    -rw-r----- 1 root whoopsie 766830 Jan 7 20:23 susres.2014-01-07_20:22:00.659707.crash
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root whoopsie 0 Jan 7 20:24 susres.2014-01-07_20:22:00.659707.upload
    -rw------- 1 whoopsie whoopsie 0 Jan 8 13:09 susres.2014-01-07_20:22:00.659707.uploaded
    -rw-r--r-- 1 root whoopsie 2564 Jan 10 12:41 virtualbox-dkms.0.crash

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: apport 2.12.5-0ubuntu2.2
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-031300rc7-generic x86_64
ApportLog:

ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2.2
Architecture: amd64
CrashReports:
 640:0:114:766830:2014-01-07 20:23:44.088550329 +0200:2014-01-10 13:06:06.403893657 +0200:/var/crash/susres.2014-01-07_20:22:00.659707.crash
 644:0:114:0:2014-01-07 20:24:06.096549724 +0200:2014-01-07 20:24:06.096549724 +0200:/var/crash/susres.2014-01-07_20:22:00.659707.upload
 644:0:114:2564:2014-01-10 12:41:25.605082972 +0200:2014-01-10 13:06:12.583893804 +0200:/var/crash/virtualbox-dkms.0.crash
 600:105:114:0:2014-01-08 13:09:13.535554185 +0200:2014-01-08 13:09:13.535554185 +0200:/var/crash/susres.2014-01-07_20:22:00.659707.uploaded
Date: Fri Jan 10 13:52:26 2014
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2012-07-25 (533 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Release amd64 (20120425)
MarkForUpload: True
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: apport
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to saucy on 2013-10-17 (84 days ago)

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

Regarding non-Alt-Tabbable, excluded from Overview popups: according to gnome-shell developers on IRC, it's because _NET_WM_STATE includes _NET_WM_STATE_SKIP_TASKBAR.

[Marius Gedminas (mgedmin)]

I don't think this is a duplicate.

Bug 1033932 is about not showing apport popups for crashes that happen during session logout. There still will be apport popups on login if suspend/resume fails to work, or if the system crashes. This is about those popups, who will continue to be shown.

Arguably it should be split into separate bugs:
1. "Report the problem" doing nothing (or at least appearing as if it did nothing)
2. Lack of correct localization
3. Incorrect window manager hints that prevent keyboard focus