Must reenable desktop effects with every restart in ubuntu 10.04 lucid

[gnimsh]

I have been running lucid since beta 1 and things went fine at first but since beta 2 was released I have been having this issue. When I first start ubuntu, my desktop effects/compositing do not work, and when I open a program that window only shows up in the left corner of the screen, leaving the rest of the screen blank (essentially in a quarter of the screen). There are no titlebars or buttons during this time, and if I run more than one program they overlap each other and I am not able to switch between them. To get around this I must open up the appearances preferences and reenable desktop effects each time I log in.

This is the first bug I've reported so please let me know what other information may be needed.

[gnimsh (loochyj)]

My card is ATI Radeon Mobility X2500. I tried to install the drivers using envyNG but was unable to install it on lucid.

[Paul Tagliamonte (paultag)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Is there any chance you could dump some more information regarding the crash?

[gnimsh (loochyj)]

If you can provide some instruction on how to do this I would be happy to. It happens on startup and I don't know that I can reproduce it without restarting.

[gnimsh (loochyj)]

I ran aticonfig --initial in a terminal only to be told that no adapters were present despite the fact that I do have an ATI radeon mobility X2500. After doing some research, I found that the X2500 is a rebranded X1700 which is not listed as being supported by the ATI driver any more. This could perhaps have something to do with my problem.

[Authentic (authentic987-ubuntu)]

I'm having the same issue, with a ati X1250 (also not supported by ATI anymore).

[gnimsh (loochyj)]

I ran the compiz-check script from this page: http://forlong.blogage.de/entries/pages/Compiz-Check and it fixed my issue. This was mainly that gnome was running it's own compositing manager which interfered with compiz. Running the script told me the problem and then asked me if I wanted to fix it. Good luck.

[Authentic (authentic987-ubuntu)]

 Distribution: Ubuntu 10.04
 Desktop environment: GNOME
 Graphics chip: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 AS [Radeon 9550]
 Driver in use: radeon
 Rendering method: AIGLX

Checking if it's possible to run Compiz on your system...

 Checking for texture_from_pixmap... [ OK ]
 Checking for non power of two support... [ OK ]
 Checking for composite extension... [ OK ]
 Checking for FBConfig... [ OK ]
 Checking for hardware/setup problems... [ OK ] (the first run it said something about the "non supported card", but don't remeber exacly what)

Everything is "OK" but the problem still there!

[Michael Schwandt (webmicsch)]

I have exactly the same problem. When I login and start an application it sticks in the upper left corner and has no window boarders.

Then I have to reenable the desktop effects and everything is fine until the next reboot or until I log out and log in.

I also ran the script from here http://forlong.blogage.de/entries/pages/Compiz-Check and everything looks fine.

=============================================

Gathering information about your system...

 Distribution: Ubuntu 10.04
 Desktop environment: GNOME
 Graphics chip: nVidia Corporation NV43 [GeForce 6600] (rev a2)
 Driver in use: nvidia
 Rendering method: Nvidia

Checking if it's possible to run Compiz on your system...

 Checking for texture_from_pixmap... [ OK ]
 Checking for non power of two support... [ OK ]
 Checking for composite extension... [ OK ]
 Checking for FBConfig... [ OK ]
 Checking for hardware/setup problems... [ OK ]

=============================================

Someone in the forum suggested to add '/usr/bin/compiz' or '/usr/bin/compiz-decorator ' to 'Startup Applications':

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=9203680&postcount=12

But this looks only like workaround to me and not a real fix for this annoying problem.

[zfjagann (zealjagannatha)]

I had this same problem. I checked into it and it turned out it was because I had been running emerald before I upgraded and the old emerald config's were lying around in my home folder, but I didn't reinstall emerald. So it tried to start it each time it booted.

I removed it from my startup programs list and added this: "compiz --replace" in its place.

This'll work if you're only using gnome. If you have KDE (or other), you'll need to have it check to see if you're running gnome or KDE and start compiz only if you're using gnome.

I wrote a simple script to do this (attached).

[Christophe Weis (christopheweis)]

Same problem here after upgrading to Lucid. With Karmic everything worked fine

Adding "compiz --replace" to the startup applications is a workaround for me.

I found in my syslog this entry:

WARNING: Could not launch application '109d0d348a728a08e125749194465008100000015400037.desktop': Unable to start application: Failed to execute child process "/usr/bin/compiz.real" (No such file or directory)

After the upgrade there is no file "compiz.real" in that directory any more.

[Christophe Weis (christopheweis)]

I just had an Idea and tried it with success:

I disabled "compiz --replace" in startup applications to reactivate the bug.

Then I created a symlink pointing at the "compiz" file which I renamed compiz.real:

sudo ln -s /usr/bin/compiz /usr/bin/compiz.real

Everything works now as expected, so it seems that there is an outdated file somewhere.

[naitsirhc (cfobel)]

Thanks Christophe! Your fix worked for me as well!

[Authentic (authentic987-ubuntu)]

Worked for me too! Thanks Christophe!!

[Alexandru Csete (alexc)]

I also had this problem after upgrading from 9.10 to 10.04, but what I did was to go to
System -> Preferences -> Appearance -> Visual Effects
and change from None to Normal
This enabled desktop effects and window borders, i.e. everything was normal again. Then I went to
System -> Preferences -> Startup Applications -> Options
and clicked on "Remember Currently Running Applications"
and the settings were okay after next reboot.

I suppose this was equivalent to adding "compiz --replace" manually to startup applications.

My desktop was pretty much standard GNOME desktop and I have no idea whether I was running emerald or something else before the upgrade.

I also saw the missing /usr/bin/compiz.real entry in the syslog so the symlink would probably have worked for me too.

[Fitch (brafferton)]

Yup! Alex's fix worked fine as well

[gnimsh (loochyj)]

Alex's solution worked for me as well, but before I ran the script I had to do this upon every single startup. I finally realized I could hibernate to avoid that. If it happens every time then the symlink is probably the best option.

[Augustin (g-u-s-g-u-s)]

No solution provided here works for me... Any word from a developer? This is a major problem, and it's starting to be frustrating...