Cannot set wallpaper. Just black screen intead of selected wallpaper.

[Karel Marik]

I cannot change or even set wallpaper. There is black screen instead of wallpaper. Selected wallpaper flashes for one second when logging out. After restart there is black screen again.

I am ready to put here any listing or screen shot if necessary.

I described this behavior in #459979 bug report. However, I am not sure if these bugs are related.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Sat Oct 24 22:29:49 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release Candidate i386 (20091020)
Package: firefox-3.5 3.5.3+build1+nobinonly-0ubuntu6
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: firefox-3.5
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686

[arky (arky)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage.

[Karel Marik (kaja-marik)]

I believe the affected application is Appearance Preferences - Backgrounds tab.

"xprop WM_CLASS" returns
WM_CLASS(STRING) = "gnome-appearance-properties", "Gnome-appearance-properties"

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

 * Is this reproducible?
 * If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?

 This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[Karel Marik (kaja-marik)]

Difficult to declare if it is reproducible on other machines when this behavior is present starting from installation of 9.10 RC. It is definitely reproducible on my comp. I can add following comments after some recent tests...

(1) Black desktop is shown just after login.
(2) When trying to change it in Appearance Preferences - Backrounds, then no change is observed. Black desktop screen remains.
(3) I am not sure but it may be an graphic driver problem as hardware acceleration of my card (ATI Radeon 9200 SE) is not working - cca 400 FPS in gear test. (I am going to submit this graphic card problem later today as I am not at home now.)
(4) Both graphic card acceleration and desktop image was OK in 9.04. However, I used proprietary driver offered by Ubuntu which is not offered in Karmic Koala.

[Karel Marik (kaja-marik)]

... I forgot to add...
(5) Selected (correct) wallpaper emerges for one or two seconds just before logout.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you get the issue in a guest session? is nautilus running?

[Karel Marik (kaja-marik)]

I am not using nautilus frequently as I prefer gnome-commander. I can run nautilus but described bug occurs when nautilus is not running. I will check later today if same holds when nautilus is running and in guest session.

I am not sure if it is related but I get a "failed" message when running nautilus from terminal. Particularly
(nautilus:1856): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed

I reported this behavior here https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/459979 which was recognized as duplicate of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/454234.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

nautilus is what is drawing the wallpaper usually, do you have gnome-settings-daemon running if you don't use nautilus?

[Karel Marik (kaja-marik)]

(1) gnome-settings-daemon is present in System monitor process list with status sleeping.
(2) Black screen is present regardless nautilus is running or not.
(3) Guest session has wallpaper and can be changed by Appearance Preferences. (!!)

What is really strange - after the very first login today the wallpaper was present for my session and I was able to change it. However, after computer restart there was black-screen again. Even shut-down & boot didn't help.

[Karel Marik (kaja-marik)]

In addition, I have found all desktop icons are invisible. See screen-shot of my desktop.

[Karel Marik (kaja-marik)]

I have found same issue reported by another Karmic user.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1284043

[Karel Marik (kaja-marik)]

I have found another Karmic users with same experience:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8213314
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1306730

[Karel Marik (kaja-marik)]

Disabling Visual Effects will resolve this issue. I believe it is a graphic driver problem. It worked fine in 8.10 or 9.04.

[ajgreeny (ajg-charlbury)]

Exactly the same problem showing here, with an ati 9200SE card and a new clean install of Ubuntu 9.10.
I have tried the fix of making a new /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf, with the following content:-

##enable KMS Radeon
options radeon modeset=1

and then running sudo update-initramfs -k `uname -r` -u, but this has a number of other problems of graphics tearing, and slow to respond.

Turning off compiz works at stopping the overall problem as does running in 16 bit colour, but it is very annoying and I would like my old graphics ability of 9.04 back again.

[bjaglin (bjaglin)]

It looks like another duplicate of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xserver-xorg-video-ati/+bug/444139

[mh1974 (m-huelsmann)]

Hi

i have got the same problem on my HP compaq nx7000, ATI Radeon Mobility 9200.
i also can't get basic 3d working in the RMB-Menu (then visual effects).

[olson.canadian (clayton888)]

Just came across this posting from someone in an ubuntu forum.
I too am having issues with my Ati based video card. Mine is an Ati Radeon
9200SE 128MB AGP card. When I installed Ubuntu 9.10, the desktop was black,
I was unable to place icons for anything on the desktop. What I finally figured out, was
that desktop effects were turned on by default, so i turned them off. That's when my desktop
came back and i was able to change backgrounds and add icons as usual.
It appears that the default (open source) ati drivers no longer support the 9000 series
video cards for anything but basic desktop use in ubuntu 9.10. You'd think ubuntu would
see that there are so many people that are still using these cards and support them still.
After all, linux has always been known for running on older and slower hardware.