installing compiz will make using metacity impossible (even after uninstalling)
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
gnome-session (Debian) |
New
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned | ||
gnome-session (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Ubuntu Desktop Bugs |
Bug Description
Binary package hint: gnome-session
It seems that debian & ubuntu include a patched /usr/bin/gnome-wm file, which is part of the gnome-session package.
The comment at the top says:
# The user can specify his prefered WM by setting the WINDOW_MANAGER
# environment variable or setting the
# /desktop/
#
# If this is not set, we search a list of known windowmanagers and use
# the first one that is found in the users's PATH
The big problem is this: it will prevent metacity from being used if compiz is not avaible. To reproduce:
1- install compiz
2- use compiz, a gconf key /desktop/
3- uninstall/purge the compiz packages
4- logout and try loggin into gnome: metacity will never start no matter what you do with your session
Looking at .xsession_errors, you see the reason: gnome-wm tries to call compiz because it read the gconf key and did not check the binary actually existed. This is completely crazy. If the binary is not present, don't try running it, fallback to metacity! Actually, if *anything* goes wrong, fallback to metacity!
Note: this hack is not present in "vanilla" gnome it seems: http://
Users can be locked out of their sessions because of this. I was lucky to have nautilus-
While this does leave people locked out of their session, this isn't a security bug, and have unflagged it.