Mysterious shadow around window when check marking an option box inside of window

[Charlie]

this mysterious shadow occurs when I click inside an empty option box in a window to download a file from my cloud service. it's the option box for "do this automatically for files like this for now on." the shadow is very brief and completely surrounds the window and is the same shape as the window, square. I've never seen this type of behavior on any version of Ubuntu so I thought it was a bug of some kind worth mentioning and it occurs every time I click the box to select/deselect it.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.24.3-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.11.0-11.16-generic 4.11.10
Uname: Linux 4.11.0-11-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.6-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Tue Jul 25 18:25:25 2017
DisplayManager: gdm3
GsettingsChanges:
 b'org.gnome.shell' b'enabled-extensions' b"['<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>']"
 b'org.gnome.shell' b'app-picker-view' b'uint32 1'
 b'org.gnome.shell' b'favorite-apps' b"['org.gnome.Nautilus.desktop', 'firefox.desktop', 'thunderbird.desktop', 'hexchat.desktop', 'gimp.desktop', 'libreoffice-writer.desktop', 'libreoffice-calc.desktop', 'org.gnome.Terminal.desktop', 'org.gnome.Calculator.desktop', 'org.gnome.Software.desktop', 'gnome-control-center.desktop']"
 b'org.gnome.desktop.interface' b'gtk-im-module' b"'gtk-im-context-simple'"
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-07-25 (0 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Alpha amd64 (20170725)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm-256color
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Charlie,

What type of graphics card (if any) are you using? Can you run 'lspci' and provide the output here?

Also, if you can then please take a photo/video of the problem.

[Charlie (hangar18)]

hey daniel! here's the output for lspci per your request:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1576
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Carrizo (rev c9)
00:01.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Kabini HDMI/DP Audio
00:02.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 157b
00:02.3 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 157c
00:02.4 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 157c
00:03.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 157b
00:08.0 Encryption controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1578
00:09.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 157d
00:09.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 157a
00:10.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH USB XHCI Controller (rev 20)
00:11.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 49)
00:12.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH USB EHCI Controller (rev 49)
00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SMBus Controller (rev 4a)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH LPC Bridge (rev 11)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1570
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1571
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1572
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1573
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1574
00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Device 1575
01:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8821AE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10)

i'll see if i can record my desktop and post that video for you as well.

[Charlie (hangar18)]

oh, i should mention that i did install the open-source driver for the wifi/ethernet controller and the AMD firmware update for AMD CPUs in additional drivers, too.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks. It sounds like we should look at how gnome-shell performs when using radeon graphics.

Can you also confirm if the mysterious shadow looks anything like:
  https://launchpadlibrarian.net/298392427/gnome-terminal_window_strange_border.png
(from bug 1650395)

[Charlie (hangar18)]

yeah, it looks like that but it's brief. it doesn't stay like that all the time. just momentarily upon clicking the box to check/uncheck. i'm still working on a video of it (screen capture/desktop recording).

[Charlie (hangar18)]

i'm not using any themes downloaded by me. i'm using the dash to dock and wifi refresh extensions if that helps, too.

[Charlie (hangar18)]

what's a good/recommend screen/desktop recorder to record what I do to replicate that effect?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

If it's very brief then best to just take a video with a phone or camera.

If it's on-screen for a while then pressing PrtScn should capture a screenshot.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks. It looks like the glitch might actually be triggered by self-resizing windows. Does it also happen in Settings? (Try clicking on the different icons in system settings which resizes the window too)

[Charlie (hangar18)]

I opened all of the apps in settings and those are fine. No glitches at all. The soft shadows those windows have around them are normal and don't look like black boxes surrounding the windows that I showed you and they're always there.

I've opened all of my programs/apps and nothing happens with them. They all seem normal. Just the ones in the video that I've shown seem to be the only ones causing this glitch.

[Charlie (hangar18)]

And you're welcome!

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. The issue you are reporting is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.

[Charlie (hangar18)]

You're welcome! I'm very proud to be helping now. I'll go through that link and see what I can do to get the bug over to the developers for them to look at it. And I'll come back with the number and get it into bugwatch.

[Charlie (hangar18)]

Fortunately, one of the recent updates has seemingly fixed this issue. I've tried several things like downloading some files and repeating the above processes and that weird box hasn't happened yet so looks like it's been triaged pretty well.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Incomplete then. If the problem doesn't reoccur and nobody adds further comments then the bug will eventually close itself.

[Charlie (hangar18)]

This issue has occurred again. I think it might've been the result of the last few updates from the software updater. Perhaps a regression? This time I noticed it when I opened the download window from within Firefox to view the status of a download and this odd box/shadow happened.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I believe I have seen this issue with Firefox also. I assumed it was because Firefox uses XWayland.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Charlie (hangar18)]

i'm still having this issue.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thunderbird is also exhibiting the problem for me. The shadow around child windows like composition/preferences flickers especially when the window is resized.

[Charlie (hangar18)]

Daniel, I know it's been some time since we've commented on this and I just wanted to come back and comment again about the status of all of this. This graphical issue is still occurring and like you, it happens when I resize the window with the cursor (click/hold/drag to desired size).

I recently started Chromium to narrow down if it's a broad issue (such as a CPU/GPU issue) or just program issue. Chromium doesn't exhibit this odd behavior so I'm feeling confident that my theory that Firefox uses code that doesn't quite agree with Wayland or my hardware could be the root cause. I'm very confident that it'll be mitigated eventually.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Yes I saw this bug with Firefox in 18.04 yesterday, so it's still an open problem.

Maybe it is just Xwayland, but worth noting I have seen similar issues in gnome-mpv when trying to run it as a pure Wayland app: https://community.ubuntu.com/t/hardware-accelerated-video-playback/304/4

[Charlie (hangar18)]

ok. this is good in a way because at least someone else besides me has seen this issue. thank you daniel for the response.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic) reached end-of-standard-support on May 31, 2023.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it anymore. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.