black window when using desktop effects

[Kirk Bridger]

Binary package hint: compiz-gnome

After running gutsy for some time (hours), using the Extra Desktop setting, windows, upon being maximized, begin showing up as black rather than rendering the window contents. I am able to resize the window and move it around normally, but the contents remain black. The only way to resolve this once it happens is to resize the window until it is very small, and then the contents are rendered. If a window is not resizable, then I have to disable the desktop effects setting to restore the window contents. The hard part here is that the desktop settings window itself is not resizable, meaning when this happens I have to click around in the black window until I hit the right area to disable effects.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Oct 27 22:41:28 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/yelp
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: yelp 2.20.0-0ubuntu3
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcCmdline: yelp
ProcCwd: /home/kirk
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: yelp
Uname: Linux Industrious 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Sun Oct 14 21:45:15 GMT 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[James Westby (james-w)]

I am also seeing this bug. It also occurs when resizing windows to a size that
is a certain amount larger than their current size. Resizing a small amount
doesn't trigger it, but once you get past a certain amount the window goes
black, apart from the decorations. If you keep the mouse held down and
shrink the window to around its original size the contents reappear.

Please let me know if I can provide any more information.

Thanks,

James

[James Westby (james-w)]

Poking around a little more this is apparently caused by a lack of RAM.
When starting video apps (e.g. totem) and the playing a video and
resizing an X error would be received that was BadAlloc (Not enough
memory).

Shutting down firefox and a couple of other apps to free up some
memory made the problem disappear.

However I noted that compiz and X were using a whole lot of memory
themselves, so I think that compiz was leaking memory, and this is
what caused the RAM shortage.

Thanks,

James