Totem running in background causes menu of foreground application (like Opera) to open

[Matthias Niess]

Totem 3.0.1 uses xtest to simulate an ALT keypress every 30 seconds. This interfers with programs that have they ALT-key bound to something (like Opera) and more importantly will open HUD every 30s when playing a movie.

--
To replicate play any movie in Totem (non-fullscreen) and open Opera. Just use Opera for a minute and the (ALT-) menu will open. It seems like totem is regularly sending a keycode so that the screensaver doesn't activate.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, yes totem is sending the alt key event for the screensaver, is opera binding alt to something?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

It's being discussed on https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=669110

[Matthias Niess (mniess)]

Thanks for the info Sebastien. The opinion in the upstream bug seems to be that this won't be fixed as it doesn't cause any problems. I added the problem with Opera to the upstream report.

[Matthias Niess (mniess)]

According to Gordon Allott, this bug also causes big problems for Unitys new HUD since HUD also uses ALT. So if HUD lands in precise it will render totem unusable. So if this is not resolved in upstream, we definately need a patch in Ubuntu! The patch proposed in the upstream bug, seems to do the trick.

[Matthias Niess (mniess)]

Okay. So there are two problems to this. #1 Totem incorrectly uses xtest to send ALT every 30s even though other APIs (dbus) are available to prevent screensaver-activation. #2 totem does this, when not in focus.

Upstream insists on using xtest as a fallback if no APIs (xscreensaver or dbus) are available. Totem 3.0.1 has two bugs that seem to be fixed in 3.2. #1 xtest should only be a fallback and not be used if dbus is there (in Ubuntu 11.10 and 12.04 both are used) and #2 totem in background shouldn't try to disable the screensaver ([1]).

Precise will not ship the fixed version of totem because of the new clutter dependencies, so this needs to be fixed in Ubuntu if HUD is going to be shipped.

[1] https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=654250

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "remove legacy screensaver support (from upstream report)" of this bug report has been identified as being a patch. The ubuntu-reviewers team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review the patch. In the event that this is in fact not a patch you can resolve this situation by removing the tag 'patch' from the bug report and editing the attachment so that it is not flagged as a patch. Additionally, if you are member of the ubuntu-reviewers team please also unsubscribe the team from this bug report.

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[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package totem - 3.0.1-0ubuntu17

---------------
totem (3.0.1-0ubuntu17) precise; urgency=low

  * debian/control.in:
    - don't Build-Depends on libxtst-dev so the codepath generating fake key
      events is disabled, those events lead to weird behaviours with
      some applications or the unity hud (lp: #923644)
    - drop the Build-Depends on individual girs, the libs depends on those
  * debian/patches/git_commandfix_incorrect_free.patch:
    - fix segfault with on line options use (lp: #860079, #884811, #917241)

  [ Jeremy Bicha ]
  * Drop coherence plugin description since the plugin has been
    removed by GNOME. (LP: #827382)
 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:48:10 +0100