Unity rendered behind windows

[Cefn]

Confirmed in Ubuntu 11.10, 12.04 and 12.10...
Unity randomly goes behind other windows, which should never happen.

ORIGINAL DESCRIPTION:
Unity's Dock disappears behind all other windows, as you can see from the attached screenshot (making the dock just visible through the shortcut Command+W).

Once it has disappeared, the only workaround is to close all applications/restart the desktop to be able to access dock icons or launch any applications through text search, since everything has disappeared to an inaccessible layer.

[Bilal Akhtar (bilalakhtar)]

Could you update your computer? You seem to be using Natty (that's fine for now), but please install all updates for Natty itself, and then check if the issue exists. If not, then upgrading to Oneiric might fix the issue.

[Anton (feenstra)]

I have the same running Oneiric - see attached screenshot. It does not happen very often, and I do not know what triggers this behaviour. There does not seem to be a way to revert this state. (Gnome panel would have this occasionally, but would move to the front on click.)

[Anton (feenstra)]

After a bit more googling, google tels me that somewhere on askubuntu (http://askubuntu.com/questions/tagged/unity?page=3&sort=newest) there was a workaround: click on a window, then right-click the unity menu bar (top of screen). That works for me. But it's still a bug IMHO.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

is that still an issue in precise?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Cefn (6-launchpad-net-cefn-com)]

The change in title from
"Unity Dock disappears behind all windows, making desktop use impossible"
to
"Unity Dock disappears behind scaled/spread windows"
has made this bug report less accurate.

In my case I showed the failure behind scaled/spread windows because it's one way to see that the dock is behind (rather than not appearing).

However, as I described originally, and as per other screenshots from other users, Unity disappears behind everything whether scaled or not. When not scaled, you can't see it behind maximised windows at all.

It's feasible this behaviour follows from executing a Compiz scale. It's hard to tell as I use scale all the time.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

OK, thanks. I've linked other duplicates of this bug. Though it's possible this is the same as bug 810285.

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

this issue went away at one stage after Oneiric release. there have been almost no reports for 3months on the issue, before that it was *the most common* issue. So, can we really be that sure the issue in Oneiric is the same we seeing today in Precise?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Well, two of the duplicates are from precise. Either we keep just those open, or all four bugs. I don't see any need to confirm that the issue was fixed and has now regressed. All we need to know is that it's still a problem in precise.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Starting in 6.0, Unity honours the window stacking order more accurately than it used to. This means old bugs where Unity (Nux) windows weren't stacked correctly will now become more obvious :(

But this isn't a new problem. I encountered this bug myself today on Unity 5.12 (Ubuntu 12.04).

[Ingo Gerth (igerth)]

This started happening on my machine today when I removed Precise and installed Quetzal. It never happened in Precise.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I believe the root cause here is the same as bug 860970. So in progress by 3v1n0.

[Pedro Nunes (nunes-p89)]

Happening too me too in Ubuntu 12.10 Alpha 3
Unity 6.2

[Simon K (octav14n)]

I Upgraded to Ubuntu 12.10 a few days ago. Since then i never got this bug again.
Seems to be solved in unity 6.4-ubuntu 6 (at least at my System)

[Brandon Schaefer (brandontschaefer)]

An easy way for me to reproduce this problem is:

Open Onboad (On Screen Keyboard)
then reset unity/compiz at the command line with: "unity"

When things come back the dash is rendered below everything (same with quicklist, hud etc..)

[Brad Campbell (bradjc5)]

A quick way to get unity back on top:

$ unity&disown

[NoBugs! (luke32j)]

It's working better with the latest update in 12.10. Instead of showing terminal lines updating over unity, it only shows a flickering scrollbar over the unity dash.

[aleandro (aleandrodasilva)]

Bug present in ubuntu 12.10:

#
A quick way to get unity back on top:

$ unity&disown
#

workaround pretty good for ubuntu 12.10.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package compiz - 1:0.9.9~daily13.02.19-0ubuntu1

---------------
compiz (1:0.9.9~daily13.02.19-0ubuntu1) raring; urgency=low

  [ Sam Spilsbury ]
  * debian/patches/100_workaround_virtualbox_hang.patch
    - VirtualBox uses a shared-memory texture_from_pixmap_implementation
    which is not compatible with our server grab usage, so force
    a different bind method when running with virtualbox and binding
    an externally managed texture

  [ Brandon Schaefer ]
  * Unity rendered behind windows (LP: #906231)

  [ MC Return ]
  * unmaximize_window_key instead of unmaximize_or_minimize_window_key
    exposed in g-c-c (LP: #1115128)

  [ Sam Spilsbury ]
  * [needs-packaging] Please upload: esvn merged (LP: #112433)
  * [nvidia] Windows appear blank white (LP: #729979)
  * Threads not found on CI (LP: #1124133)
  * Unity rendered behind windows (LP: #906231)
  * Compiz hangs in glXBindTexImageEXT in VirtualBox (LP: #1127866)
  * 1:0.9.8+bzr3319-0ubuntu1 regression: keeps setting gsettings keys to
    wrong values (LP: #1063617)
  * Creating windows above just-destroyed windows causes newly created
    windows to receive invalid stack positions (LP: #1088399)

  [ Marco Trevisan (Treviño) ]
  * Calling setOptionForPlugin does not work for core options (LP:
    #1122228)

  [ Automatic PS uploader ]
  * Automatic snapshot from revision 3611
 -- Automatic PS uploader <email address hidden> Tue, 19 Feb 2013 08:46:08 +0000

[NoBugs! (luke32j)]

This is still happening in 13.04! The background of Unity dash popup doesn't seem to update with the window behind it either.

This is with Intel Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller.

[Brandon Schaefer (brandontschaefer)]

Can anyone please add more information in how to reproduce this?

[Andrew (andrewkvalheim)]

I can still reproduce this [1] behavior in Ubuntu 13.04. I think the screencast is self-explanatory.

[1]: https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1059715/+attachment/3362016/+files/screencast.ogv

[Brandon Schaefer (brandontschaefer)]

@Andrew

Yes I understand this happens, what Im having problems doing is getting this behaviour to happen on my machine.

Also the bug you are describing/showing is not the same bug. You are showing the icon being rendered behind the dash, which is a different bug I suppose. If you could make a bug report and try to put some steps in to how to reproduce this that would be greatly appreciated.

To anyone else:

Does this happen on start up? Do you have any ccsm settings changed? Do you use any on screen keyboards that forces things to always be on top?

Do you have some steps to reproduce this?

Also could you past out this log:
wmctrl -l

[Andrew (andrewkvalheim)]

Thanks, Brandon. I have opened a bug report (bug 1059715), and in fact have even included a screencast to demonstrate how to reproduce it.

That bug report was marked as a duplicate of this one.

[Brandon Schaefer (brandontschaefer)]

Hmmmmm Shoot, looks like a new bug report has shown up. (bug 1176624)

If anyone can help reproduce this, that would be great. Atm, this looks like a stacking issue (the unity windows/nux windows getting lost?) Not being able to reproduce is the only thing blocking this from being fixed :(. Ill poke around some more people to see if they can, but right now I have no steps on how anyone is getting this problem...

[ariel cornejo (arielco)]

I'm having this exact problem in Saucy amd64 (compiz 0.9.10). I have no clue about what triggered it.

Should I reopen the bug?

compiz 1:0.9.10+13.10.20 all
unity 7.1.2+13.10.20131 amd64
unity-services 7.1.2+13.10.20131 amd64

[snapy (sdfjsfjaei-hans)]

I'm now having this issue in Ubuntu (Trusty) 14.04 LTS.

[Michael Heuberger (michael.heuberger)]

Me too, in Ubuntu Trusty 14.04 any right-click popups from the launcher appear behind windows :(

[Yuri Gor (yuri-horus)]

I have exactly the same problem on Ubuntu 14.04.
Alt+tab window manager appears behind all the windows,
Can't touch left-side launcher panel, if it's in auto-reveal mode, seems unity has wrong z-order

[Stephen M. Webb (bregma)]

Closing Compiz 0.9.9 task (0.9.9 series is obsolete)