Can't switch from Unity to Metacity without losing app menus

[Eric Appleman]

Binary package hint: metacity

Switching from a Unity session to a Metacity session either through GDM or the command line will create a situation where the app menus do not appear.

Unless there is a command to type into the terminal, this can only be fixed with a reboot.

Furthermore, apps that do not follow GTK precisely, like Firefox, are not affected.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.04
Package: metacity 1:2.30.3-0ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.37-12.26-genusername 2.6.37
Uname: Linux 2.6.37-12-generic i686
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Jan 21 10:21:28 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Alpha i386 (20101229)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US:en
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: metacity

[Eric Appleman (erappleman)]

Can I at least get a confirmation?

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

That shouldn't happen if you switch your session in GDM. Switching in the current session isn't supported either by us, either by upstream (required components are fixed for a session).

I can't reproduce that when I switch between two sessions in gdm, can you please try to give reproducible steps (like 1."entering ubuntu desktop session", 2."logout", 3. "login in the ubuntu classic session") for us to be able to reproduce it?

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

There's quite a few situations where the global menus can "jam"... (I've got one at this moment).

All of these, and the above could possibly be worked around by having a watchdog-type setup on the Gtk+/XUL side that unhides the local menus if the global menus stop working or the D-Bus interface disappears. It might not be elegant, but it would probably be more robust.

...Or perhaps a watchdog on the global menu side that drops its interface reliably and then the individuals application menu hooks watch for that action and revert to their local menus.

[Paul Sladen (sladen)]

Eric: I've raised making the global app menus a bit more fallback robust with didrocks and kamstrup, will investigate it further when Tedg is around too.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for metacity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for unity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future.