Background grey even though set to image and image is displayed elsewhere

[Wise Melon]

After upgrading to GNOME 3.20 on Ubuntu GNOME 16.04 I have found that even if I set my background again through the gnome-control-center that my background looks like this:

    Background_Not_Showing.png

Even though it shows correctly in both of these places:

    Background_Shown_In_Settings.png
    Background_Shown_In_AO.png

I have also tried setting the button via the right-click option in Nautilus but still the same results.

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

Another thing I have noticed is that when I log in I see the correct background for a few seconds until it is replaced with the grey.

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

This bug seems to have the same effects at least as Bug #1521676 so perhaps they are related in some way?

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I pushed an update to the nautilus package (1:3.20.1-0ubuntu1~xenial2) today that I think fixes this bug.

Please update your packages and then restart all Nautilus instances (logging out and then back in is a good way to do this). Please report here whether this fixes your bug or not.

Although it wasn't needed here, in the future, please use ubuntu-bug to report bugs like this. In this case, you could have ran

ubuntu-bug nautilus

More information about that can be found at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Reporting_non-crash_hardware_and_desktop_application_bugs

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

@Jeremy,

Yes, after restarting all Nautilus instances (actually just killing it did the trick) the problem is solved. Though seemingly only affected the Adwaita GTK+ theme as changing it to the Numix one fixed the issue.

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

By the way, are you going to give the patch to upstream (the upstream report is linked) or was this something only affecting the Ubuntu nautilus for some reason?

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I got the patch from upstream! :)

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

Ah! Glad all that is settled then!

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

After recently upgrading to the latest version of the numix-gtk-theme from the PPA I decided to switch to it, however up on doing so I triggered this issue. When I switched back to Adwaita however the issue went as well.

Now however, even after switching back to Adwaita, the issue still persists. It seemed to coincide with when I restarted Nautilus as it wasn't allow me to do anything with the desktop (this is another issue which I have reported).

So should this report be reopened or shall I file a new report?

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

I have now also noticed that if I am to end the Nautilus process, then my desktop background shows as it is meant to everywhere. But starting Nautilus again makes the desktop grey again.

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

If I end the Nautilus process and then start it from Terminal this is the output:

(nautilus:11557): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to register client: GDBus.Error:org.gnome.SessionManager.AlreadyRegistered: Unable to register client
Initializing nautilus-dropbox 2015.10.28

(nautilus:11557): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme parsing error: <broken file>:1:0: Failed to import: The resource at '/org/gnome/libgd/tagged-entry/default.css' does not exist
Nautilus-Share-Message: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: 'net usershare' returned error 255: mkdir failed on directory /var/run/samba/msg.lock: Permission denied
net usershare: cannot open usershare directory /var/lib/samba/usershares. Error No such file or directory
Please ask your system administrator to enable user sharing.

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

Upstream have decided to reopen this bug and investigate further.

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

Upstream have released a fix for this issue which now needs to be backported in.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package nautilus - 1:3.20.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
nautilus (1:3.20.1-0ubuntu1) yakkety; urgency=medium

  [ Andrea Azzarone ]
  * debian/patches/0001-desktop-canvas-view-scale-desktop-workarea.patch:
    Scale down workarea geometries to application pixels, so that icons are
    positioned correctly on hidpi setups. (LP: #1564375)

  [ Marco Trevisan (Treviño) ]
  * debian/patches/ubuntu_revert_no_wallpaper.patch:
    - Ensure nautilus-window is always using a RGBA visual

  [ Jeremy Bicha ]
  * 0003-Fix-white-desktop.patch:
    - Fix desktop wallpaper not showing (LP: #1586655)

  [ Iain Lane ]
  * Port and re-enable the remaining patches.
  * Merge with the archive branch.
  * Upload to Ubuntu - thanks to Ubuntu GNOME folks for the initial work.

  [ Michael Biebl ]
  * d/p/0001-mime-actions-use-format-argument.patch: Fix format string handling
    in show_unhandled_type_error(), patch taken from bgo#765918.

  [ Rico Tzschichholz ]
  * New upstream release
  * Bump build-deps as per configure.ac
  * Refresh patches as required
  * Update and enable 12_unity_launcher_support.patch

  [ Tim Lunn ]
  * New upstream release
  * Bump build-deps as per configure.ac
  * Refresh patches as required
  * nautilus-data.install: Don't install gconf conversion metadata
    upstream have dropped this, since it was for gnome 2 to 3 migration

 -- Iain Lane <email address hidden> Tue, 02 Aug 2016 11:43:43 +0100

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

When will this fix also be landed in Xenial? The gnome3-staging PPAs that is.

[Wise Melon (wise-melon-deactivatedaccount)]

Seems the version in the PPA has been patched too.