Opening applications from Tray icon keep creating new windows that are not closed when minimizing to tray leading to the "Maximum number of clients reached" for graphical applications

[Florent Viard]

(Maximum number of clients reachedxwininfo: unable to open display ':0.0')
Trying to find the origin of the following bug that I experienced :
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-screensaver/+bug/263211
(also http://www.karakas-online.de/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10494)
without gnome-screensaver being involved, i discovered something:

xlsclient was around 25 (so normal), and `xwininfo -root -children|wc -l` was around 200 so also normal. But I couldn't open an application. Then i discovered that
`xwininfo -tree -root|wc -l` was huge: more than 3000.

Then I noticed that each time I un-minimize an application from its tray icon (currently I use XCHAT and thunderbird with the minimize to tray addon): this number grow but don't go down when i re-minimized it again to the tray.

Example:
Xchat as a tray icon:
 user@user-desktop:~/dev/work/wspaces$ xwininfo -tree -root|wc -l
2676

Then xchat opened by clicking on the tray icon:
user@user-desktop:~/dev/work/wspaces$ xwininfo -tree -root|wc -l
2695

Then clicking again on the xchat tray icon to minimize to tray the window:
user@user-desktop:~/dev/work/wspaces$ xwininfo -tree -root|wc -l
2695

Then clicking again on the xchat tray icon to reopen the window:
user@user-desktop:~/dev/work/wspaces$ xwininfo -tree -root|wc -l
2714

And so on, this value always increasing each time I click on the tray icon to reopen the window.
2733 , 2752, 2771, ...

That's why after few days (closing and opening the windows like this 40 times per hour), I can't open anymore application without killing xchat and thunderbird.

My system is uptodate with:
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hello
Is this problem present with the latest updated Lucid's or Maverick's packages?
Thanks in advance
Fabio

[Florent Viard (fviard)]

Hi, sorry that it took me so much time to be able to update to test.

After upgrading my system from 9.10 to 10.10, I still encounter this problem with Maverick and all the packages up-to-date.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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