remmina/rdp window turns blue or crashes gnome-shell

[Bastien Durel]

When using precise remmina to access to a windows remote computer, the whole window (including decorations, see screenshot) turns blue.
This is triggered by hitting the "resize window" button

This often (but not each time) crashes the shell, wich cannot be re-launched (even with --replace), complaining about a composer started on the screen

when crashing, remmina prints this message in the terminal:
(remmina:4484): Gtk-WARNING **: drawing failure for widget `GtkDrawingArea': invalid matrix (not invertible)

this message is printed in the .xsession-errors:
Avertissement du gestionnaire de fenêtres : Log level 16: The program 'gnome-shell' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)'.
  (Details: serial 66933 error_code 11 request_code 12 minor_code 0)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the GDK_SYNCHRONIZE environment
   variable to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

I may send the whole .xsession-errors file if needed

[Bastien Durel (bastien-durel)]

NB: this happens in precise (worked well under oneiric), grdesktop works well

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Hervé Renault (renault-herve)]

I had to go back to Vinagre.

[Bastien Durel (bastien-durel)]

Was vinagre updated to let you choose the client resolution ?

[Felix (apoapo)]

Bug is still present in Ubuntu Quantal.

[Bastien Durel (bastien-durel)]

Looks like it works better if "use client resolution is not checked"

[John Samuel Anderson (guitarmanvt)]

I experience this issue on Linux Mint 13 Maya, with the Cinnamon desktop--this is based on Ubuntu 11.04 Precise, I believe. Remmina VNC to Windows 7 began to cause the desktop manager to die. I had to CTRL+ALT+F5 to get to a tty login, then kill the gnome-session process, so I could log back in again. I found out that I could also issue "cinnamon --replace :0" to restart the desktop manager.

I turned on the Remmina option to "Disable Tray Icon" and it seems to work now. I had not noticed or used the tray icon before this problem began, but that may not be conclusive evidence.

[Romano Giannetti (romano-giannetti)]

It happens here.
The trick of disabling tray icon does not help for me.
It seems that deselecting "using client resolution" and putting a fixed resolution works arounf the bug for me.

[Romano Giannetti (romano-giannetti)]

I correct myself. Happened again, with a fixed client resolution.
The strange thing is that if the resolution I use is less than the one the Windows client has natively it seems to work. If I use a bigger resolution it crashes.
To be clear --- in 1152x864 it seems to work, in 1280x960 it crashes. Using 16bit color depth, but seems independent.

[Romano Giannetti (romano-giannetti)]

Another comment/question: I use remmina quite heavily on my other machine, and never happened. It happened on this new PC in which I have the 64-bit version of Quantal.
Could be a 32bit/64bit problem?

[David Armitage (dnarmitage)]

In case it helps, I get the same blue screen problem, but as soon as session starts, and no changes to resolution options affects this.
But additionally, I cannot get the keyboard to work, but the remote UI respondes to mouse clicks. Have tried connections to different windows servers and all suffer the same issue. Right-Control keys for fullscreen etc. are OK.
And grdesktop works fine.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Bastien Durel, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better. However, your crash report is missing. Please follow these instructions to have apport report a new bug about your crash that can be dealt with by the automatic retracer. First, execute at a terminal:
cd /var/crash && sudo rm * ; sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get -y upgrade && sudo service apport start force_start=1

If you are running the Ubuntu Stable Release you might need to enable apport in /etc/default/apport and restart.

Now reproduce the crash, then open your file manager, navigate to your /var/crash directory and open the crash report you wish to submit.
If this fails you will have to open a terminal and file your report with 'ubuntu-bug /var/crash/_my_crash_report.crash' where _my_crash_report.crash is the crash you would like to report. If you get an error that you aren't allowed to access this report you will have to file it with 'sudo ubuntu-bug /var/crash/_my_crash_report.crash'. If you run the command against the crash report and a window pops up asking you to report this, but then never opens a new report, you would be affected by https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/apport/+bug/994921 . In order to WORKAROUND this, one would need to open the following file via a command line:
sudo nano /etc/apport/crashdb.conf

and comment out the line:
'problem_types': ['Bug', 'Package'],

by changing it to:
# 'problem_types': ['Bug', 'Package'],

Save, close, and try to file the crash report again via:
ubuntu-bug /var/crash/_my_crash_report.crash

I'm closing this bug report since the process outlined above will automatically open a new bug report which can then dealt with more efficiently.

Please do not attach your crash report manually to this report and reopen it.

Thank you for your understanding.

Helpful bug reporting tips:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs