[launcher] launcher sometimes missing at Unity startup

[Lucazade]

Sometimes Launcher (unity-2d-launcher) is not loaded at session startup,
I have to logout and login again in session to get launcher working.

Attached screenshot and .xsession-errors

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Do you have all the updates from the PPA? Especially, what is the version of libqtbamf that you have?
Are you able to reproduce the failed launch from the console by just trying to run unity-2d-launcher?

I noticed other unrelated issues. Do you have libqt4-svg installed? Do you have unity installed? Is it a brand new Maverick you have?

[Lucazade (lucazade)]

- I am not able to reproduce the failed launch manually from terminal, I tried several times and it always loaded succesfully.
Also at session startup if fails random, it doesn't happen always.

- I have all the updates from daily PPA:

unity-2d-default-settings 0.1.33~bzr49
unity-2d-launcher 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376
unity-2d-panel 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376
unity-2d-places 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376
unity-2d-spread 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376
libuqpanel0 0.4-0ubuntu1~bzr376
libqtgconf1 0.1-0ubuntu1~maverick1bzr34
libqtdee1 0.1-0ubuntu1~maverickbzr22
libqtbamf1 0.1-0ubuntu1~maverickbzr370
libmetacity-private0 1:2.30.2-0ubuntu1upicek2
metacity 1:2.30.2-0ubuntu1upicek2
metacity-common 1:2.30.2-0ubuntu1upicek2

- libqt4-svg is not installed.

- I have only Unity-2d installed, no other Unity-3d in this system

- This Maverick was installed a couple of months ago from scratch, it is not an upgrade from Lucid (proposed repo is enable if matter)

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

About "- libqt4-svg is not installed.", I opened bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-2d/+bug/705385 and waiting for your input there.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Thanks for the answers Lucazade. It sounds like a random crash of the launcher.

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

I've seen the same issue only when logging into the session for the first time. Sometimes the launcher is not visible but it is running. Killing and restarting the launcher fixes the problem. I will attach .xsession-errors if I can reproduce.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Darn. Confirming then.

[Lucazade (lucazade)]

got it again at session startup.
attached xsession-errors

[Bill Filler (bfiller)]

@florian
Can we add debug output to the launcher to print out what it thinks it's current size is when it's asked to paint? Perhaps it think it's supposed to be the wrong size or drawn offscreen?

Also wondering if it's timing related. Wondering if we moved the launcher startup out of the session and instead launched it via an /etc/xdg/autostart file if that would impact this issue.

[Shelby McGregor (canadian-birch)]

When I logged in just now, everything was running, including the launcher. I didn't do anything different, so I've no idea WHY it's working, I'm just happy that it is! Thanks for the help, everyone.

[Lucazade (lucazade)]

@Shelby
Your comment is referred to "broken QT session" I guess, correct?

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Bill: the debug statements you asked for are part of https://code.launchpad.net/~fboucault/unity-2d/prepend_appname_in_debug/+merge/47142

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Similar behaviour is exhibited by the panel in https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-2d/+bug/705074

It might be due to the fact that they share the same code for sizing and positioning.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

That would be my guess too. When I investigated bug #681101 (unity-2d on multiple monitors), I could easily reproduce a situation where the launcher was running but not visible (see comment #5 in bug #681101). The bug report has a branch linked that implements some preliminary fixes that may help.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Sweet confirmation Olivier!
I really need a review on https://code.launchpad.net/~fboucault/unity-2d/prepend_appname_in_debug/+merge/47142 to get the debugging to people.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Bill: the debugging statements are pushed and building in the PPA as we speak.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Shelby, @Lucazade: could you upgrade to the latest version and post here the content of the file ~/.xsession-errors please?

[Lucazade (lucazade)]

attached .xsession-errors after new ppa update

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

@Lucazade: was the launcher visible in the session? We need the ~/.xsession-errors file of a session where the launcher is not visible.

[Lucazade (lucazade)]

Yes, launcher was visible in the session, "unfortunately"! :)

I'll try to catch a .xsession-errors file of a session where the launcher is not visible,
although this issue appears seldom.

[Lucazade (lucazade)]

Launcher crashed during the session.. I was clicking and dragging launcher icons (stress test!)

Unity 2D Launcher: [FATAL] ASSERT failure in QList<T>::at: "index out of range", file /usr/include/qt4/QtCore/qlist.h, line 455
Avviso del window manager: Received a _NET_WM_MOVERESIZE message for 0x3400033 ([all varia); these messages lack timestamps and therefore suck.

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Very interesting Lucazade. I believe this deserves a separate bug report. Also if you could try to reproduce it with the launcher ran with gdb, that would be really helpful:

$ gdb unity-2d-launcher

When it crashes copy/paste the output of the following:

$ t a a bt

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

I believe that this bug will be fixed once https://code.launchpad.net/~fboucault/unity-2d/launcher_use_panel_class/+merge/47758 is merged.

[Andrew Hayzen (ahayzen)]

Hi

Every time start the machine I have this bug, with the launcher not appearing. I then have to logout and log back in again and sometimes have to even call unity from the command line to make it appear.

I have attached my xsession-errors log.

Hope that helps and is fixed soon.

Andy

[Florian Boucault (fboucault)]

Thanks for the feedback Andrew. I definitely believe that what you are experiencing will be fixed with the patch in comment #24 that will land very very soon.

[Simon Bull (simon-d-bull)]

This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug #705074, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

Regards
~Simon Bull

[Simon Bull (simon-d-bull)]

Hi again
sorry for the mark as duplicate, i was meant to mark it on a another bug, but got it the other way round, and posted it on the wrong one.
Sorry for the confusion - i will get it right this time!

Regards
~Simon