Diodon drop-down menu flickers and nothing can be selected

[Tinman]

  I'm using Vs 1.3. Ever since Vs 1.2.X, when I mouse-over the Diodon icon in the Menu Bar, the drop-down window flickers in and out real fast and the only thing that can be selected is Preferences and Quit. If I leave it alone for a while it eventually corrects itself and I can once again use it, though sometimes I still can't select a clip. Most of the time I have to forcibly kill it and re-start it to get it fully functional again.
  This happens sporadically from anywhere from a fresh boot to several times within an hour.

  I'm not sure if it's related, but sometimes even when it's not flickering I can't select a clip, everything except the preferences and quit are unresponsive.

Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
64 bit Xeon system, 8 cores, 20 Gb of memory.
Intel® X79 Express chipset
ASUS GT630-2GD3 GeForce GT 630

[Oliver Sauder (sao)]

Thanks for this bug report. This is certainly not good - I haven't seen it myself though before.

To better analyze what the problem is would it be important to have a debug log file.

For this you can configure Diodon to automatically write its debug log to your home folder.

You have to go to Startup Applications through the Dash and change the command of the Diodon entry to the following:
bash -c "G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all setsid /usr/bin/diodon &>~/diodon_debug.log"

Once you have logged in and out of Unity Diodon will now start automatically and write its log file to ~/diodon_debug.log.

Keep now Diodon running till the error as you explained it occurs - when it does get a copy of the diodon_debug.log and attach it to this bug report.

Hope this will help to see what is going on. Thanks.

[Tinman (tinman57)]

  I did as you suggested, so now we'll just wait for the bug, which shouldn't be too long now. I also forgot to say that sometimes even when the Diodon drop down menu isn't flashing, I'll select the clear option and nothing happens. The only way to get it to show a clean window is to stop Diodon and re-start it. Once I do that the window is cleared of all the old clips.

[Tinman (tinman57)]

  I remembered to get the log today. Uploading it now...

[Tinman (tinman57)]

  I remembered to get the log today. Uploading it now... One thing I forgot to mention, after changing the Diodon command for the debug, I noticed that Diodon only started doing the flashing thing but a couple of times a day. After changing it back to its original "diodon %u", I had to stop and restart Diodon several times in just minutes because of the problem reappearing.

[Oliver Sauder (sao)]

Wow this log files indicates a corrupt Zeitgeist database.

Best we try to reset it and see whether this solves the problem.

First close Diodon and then run the following commands:
mv ~/.local/share/zeitgeist/ ~/.local/share/zeitgeist-old
zeitgeist-daemon --replace

and then start Diodon again and observe whether it solves the problem. If not we have to investigate further.

[Tinman (tinman57)]

  I did as suggested and this is what I got in return:

** (zeitgeist-datahub:11313): WARNING **: zeitgeist-datahub.vala:229: Unable to get name "org.gnome.zeitgeist.datahub" on the bus!

Started Diodon again and made some clips, but nothing showed up in the drop-down window. Exited Diodon again and re-started, then I could see what I had clipped.

  BTW, what does the zeitgeist database do exactly?

[Oliver Sauder (sao)]

It could be that it took a bit of time for the zeitgeist service to start so therefore first this error message.

But do I understand correctly that it is now working as expected?

Zeitgeist is a library and service which is also used heavily by other Unity Services to record user activity. Diodon uses the exact same service to record clipboard activities. See project site here http://zeitgeist-project.com/ if you wanna know more.

[Tinman (tinman57)]

  It's still doing the flash thing, but it only does it between 1/2 and 10 seconds, and then stops flashing and is usable again. I can deal with that, but yesterday it kept flashing and I had to manually kill and restart it for it to work, like 5 or 6 times within a few minutes. So I think the best description as to how it's working is to say "intermittently". For the most part, it works, but occasionally I have to stop and restart it because the flashing thing. If I waited a while it would come back to life on it's own, but when I need to get something out of the clipboard like I do so often, and don't want for the wait which is sometimes fast and other times slow, then I have to kill and restart it to get back functionality. I just copied this paragraph into the clipboard and opened the drop-down menu, it flashed for about 3 seconds and then returned to normal, so that ain't too bad. lol

  It's probably something to do with one of the many updated libraries in Ubuntu or something like that and Diodon don't get along with it. The cost of updates I suppose.....

  I do appreciate your time and help. Perhaps one day someone will come across this issue and discover the fix.

  Thanks Oliver

[Oliver Sauder (sao)]

This is a fairly old bug and also seemed to be in relation with Unity.

I am marking this as invalid but if someone can still reproduce this issue on a newer system please comment.