No monitors listed in Color settings

[Forage]

I switched to GNOME 3.18 yesterday after updating to Ubuntu 15.10. The Colour section in the settings doesn't list monitors any more though, only printers.
"colormgr get-devices" only gives me the printers again, not my two monitors.
"colormgr get-devices-by-kind display" gives me nothing.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 15.10
Package: gnome-control-center 1:3.18.2-1ubuntu1~wily1 [origin: LP-PPA-gnome3-team-gnome3-staging]
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.2.0-18.22-generic 4.2.3
Uname: Linux 4.2.0-18-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.19.1-0ubuntu5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Thu Nov 19 11:44:21 2015
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-10-19 (761 days ago)
InstallationMedia: This
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to wily on 2015-11-18 (0 days ago)

[Forage (forage)]

The Xenial live cd with GNOME 3.18 does not display the same issue. Does this make it an Ubuntu 15.10 + GNOME 3.18 issue or an update from GNOME 3.16 to 3.18 issue?

[Forage (forage)]

The problem is slightly different than first found. I performed a complete clean install of Ubuntu GNOME 15.10, not preserving anything on the system, including my home folder. Even with the included GNOME 3.16, the color setting do not list my monitors. It only displays the text 'Unable to detect any devices that can be color managed'. It is therefore not GNOME 3.18 related.

It wasn't a problem on Ubuntu GNOME 15.04 with GNOME 3.16 though.

[Forage (forage)]

For the record: just like the Xenial live cd, both monitors are happily listed when using the Wily live cd as well.

[Vidar Hoel (vidar-hoel)]

This bugs affect me too, after I did a clean install of Ubuntu GNOME 15.10. Was unable to color manage my screen, since both the Color-setting (GUI) and "colormgr get-devices" returns an empty list.

However, there is a way to make this work: Install and use "lightdm", insted of "gdm". This will enable you to color manage your screen. (Solution found here: http://askubuntu.com/a/699444)

[Vidar Hoel (vidar-hoel)]

Marked this bug as affecting gdm

[Vidar Hoel (vidar-hoel)]

Today I testet by stopping GDM, and starting X/Gnome with the command "startx". Then I was able to color manage my screen. So there seems to be a bug with gdm.

On a side not: Please discard the comment above stating "Marked this bug as affecting gdm", since I did not do that.

[Vidar Hoel (vidar-hoel)]

I did compare /var/log/Xorg.0.log from GDM, lightdm and startx. The only difference I could find was these lines in the top of the log which only appered when starting GDM:

  [ 408.717] _XSERVTransSocketUNIXCreateListener: ...SocketCreateListener() failed
  [ 408.717] _XSERVTransMakeAllCOTSServerListeners: server already running
  [ 408.717] _XSERVTransSocketUNIXCreateListener: ...SocketCreateListener() failed
  [ 408.717] _XSERVTransMakeAllCOTSServerListeners: server already running

Does not know if it's related?

[Forage (forage)]

Does anyone have any idea what might be going on and how to fix it? I'd love to use the colour profiles for my monitors again.

[Forage (forage)]

Fixed in Ubuntu GNOME 16.04, with GNOME 3.18 as well as 3.20

[Bruce Pieterse (octoquad)]

Hi Forage,

Thanks for letting us know that it is now working. For the other people that were affected by this bug, could you confirm if this indeed fixed for you as well. If not, please provide more information.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Ubuntu GNOME because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Forage (forage)]

Fixed would be more correct than expired. Just because others didn't bother to respond any more doesn't mean it's not.

[Bruce Pieterse (octoquad)]

Hi Forage,

Thank for changing it to 'Fix Released'. Expired is automatically set by a bot if nobody replies after 60 days.

[Sergei Datsenko (dosyas)]

Hi guys,

Sorry for spoiling the party but it doesn't seem to reliably work. At least for me color management broke for my system when I upgraded from Kubuntu 14.04 to 16.04 and never fixed despite having only lightdm and never having gdm3.

I've also tried fresh installs in VirtualBox of Xubuntu 16.04, Kubuntu 16.04 and 17.04 - neither works. But for Kubuntu 14.04 and Ubuntu 16.04 colormgr works in VirtualBox just fine.

[Sergei Datsenko (dosyas)]

Apparently this only works when the display manager explicitly registers devices with colord. For Ubuntu 16.04 it's done by unity-settings-daemon. As none of the other ubuntu flavors use unity, color management is broken everywhere else - it's still not implemented in KDE5, which came after 14.04 (KDE4), Xfce never had it (Xubuntu 14.04 - colormgr get-devices empty).

As a workaround you can install unity-settings-daemon and run it from your session (worked as is from Xfce and needed sudo to work from KDE5), but feels hacky because this interferes with other settings like input and etc.

[Alex (eneeen)]

I've installed Kubuntu 17.04 in VirtualBox and there is no output from 'colormgr get-devices'. To get proper output I have to install gnome-color-manager and colord-kde and run color settings from system configuration. I wanted to manually assign profile without installing gnome-color-manager and colord-kde but it seems there is no such way.