Desktop freezes on background change

[Adam Ryczkowski]

Symptoms:

1. Freezing happen spontaneously, ca once per 20 background changes, at exactly the moment the background changes.
2. No screen update under the graphical terminal.
3. I can still switch between virtual terminals with Alt+Ctrl+Fx
4. All applications still work; music plays, and I can still interact with running applications, like VirtualBox (if it is currently running). I didn't test xdotool and wmctrl
5. Mouse cursor icon is visible and you can control it with the mouse. Clicks are ignored.
6. Mouse cursor icon changes while hovering under different zones of windows drawn on the screen, just like it would if the system was working normally.
7. It looks like the keyboard is ignored too; except for Ctrl+Alt+Backspace (if a correct script is loaded which intercepts this key combination). Ctrl+Alt+T (to display terminal), Alt + F2 (to show "Run command..." dialog) are ignored.
8. On the .xsession-errors you can see

(cinnamon:2528): Clutter-CRITICAL **: clutter_actor_queue_relayout: assertion 'CLUTTER_IS_ACTOR (self)' failed
No such schema 'com.canonical.unity-greeter'
Window manager warning: Window 0x5000051 (Open Datab) sets an MWM hint indicating it isn't resizable, but sets min size 104 x 1 and max size 486 x 228; this doesn't make much sense.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x5000051 (Open Datab)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x5000051 (Open Datab)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x5000015 (Database f)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Window 0x50004b7 (Edit Entry) sets an MWM hint indicating it isn't resizable, but sets min size 104 x 1 and max size 568 x 523; this doesn't make much sense.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x50004b7 (Edit Entry)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x50004b7 (Edit Entry)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
Window manager warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x5000015 (Database f)
Window manager warning: meta_window_activate called by a pager with a 0 timestamp; the pager needs to be fixed.
No such schema 'com.canonical.unity-greeter'

System affected:
Linux Mint 16 Cinnamon 64 bit. Confirmed on two independent machines using this system.

System unaffected:
Linux Mint 15 Cinnamon 64 bit.

How to reproduce:

1. Install the Linux Mint 16 with Cinnamon 2.0 64 bit
2. Install a program that changes wallpaper (tested on variety, and wallch) and set it to start changing wallpaper as the background task.
3. Wait for background to change several times. The bug doesn't kick in on the first background change, you need to wait a moment.

[xzhou (zhou-xiaoyong)]

same problem, change wallpaper or theme, random freeze.

[Tony George (teejee2008)]

Issue can be reproduced by running the following command repeatedly:
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.background picture-uri <path>

Issues does not occur everytime. Happens around once every 5 times the wallpaper is changed.

[Tony George (teejee2008)]

Workaround:
Change wallpaper by changing: org.cinnamon.desktop.background
Instead of:
org.gnome.desktop.background

Changing the property for gnome will cause a freeze if you are using cinnamon desktop.

[ALafya (lafyaabu)]

The work-around does not prevent the problem for me.
It looks like it has no effect at all.

[Wojtek Majewski (jumski)]

This bug is still present on Mint 17.3 (Cinnamon 2.8.6).

Any clues how to fix? Background switcher is kinda nice to have ;-)

[Adam Ryczkowski (adam-ryczkowski)]

No clues :-( . This is the main reason I left Cinnamon altogether in
favour of Ubuntu 14.04 some years ago.

Few times I experienced similar behaviour/bug on Ubuntu, but it is
unrelated to the background change. (It has something to do with
interfacing with iPad via USB).

[6alfalfa9 (6alfalfa9)]

The same problem, but I __cannot__ switch between virtual terminals.
Gnome Shell 3.22.1.
Arch linux.

[Nigel Garwell (nrgarwell)]

Looking at the CPU history rolling graph, it shows a 100% reading on one (of my four) cpus for about 1 second which freezes both mouse and keyboard activity.
The freeze occurs immediately after the background wallpaper has finished changing.
Making changes to the settings within the backgrounds system setting panel has no effect (except to change the timing of the freeze occurance which is always linked to the time interval chosen for the background to change).
My backgrounds are from a directory of my own (within Pictures) but the freeze still happens with the Sarah or Serena pix directories.
When I reboot, there is an (undetermined) interval before it starts to freeze.

I am running Mint 18.1 64-bit, Cinnamon 3.2.7, Kernel 4.4.0-21-generic on an AMD Athlon II 640 x4. Graphics is AMD/ATI Oland Pro (Radeon 240/340) VGA controller.

As Wojtek says - it is nice to see the pictures change!

[Nigel Garwell (nrgarwell)]

So, TWO YEARS! have passed.
I am now on Mint 19 Cinnamon 3.89 Kernel 4.15.0-43-generic same graphics.

The bug is still alive and well.

If you shut your rig down overnight, resetting the delay back to zero, you get through the next day almost not noticing it. Setting the change interval to longer also helps.
Surely though, this is not the point!! As Wojtek says - it is nice to see the pictures change!

I leave my m/c on continuously (it's like the cats - it hibernates at night) because the boot cycle is not always successful and I want to see frequent picture changes.

The header for this says "This bug affects you and 8 other people". So I suppose it gets no priority at all. Maybe most people stick with the same, unchanging, background?

The Mint/Cinnamon package is amazing but please can someone fix this?

[Todd Morrow (toddmo)]

Just blow off the default wallpaper changer and use variety

https://peterlevi.com/variety/