Desktop switcher won't disable gnome-panel when changing from classic to netbook mode

[Tuna Soncul]

Binary package hint: desktop-switcher

The desktop switcher does not disable the panel when switching from the Classic mode to the Ubuntu Netbook Mode. Both top and bottom panels are running even after hard reboots.

Also, gnome-panel respawns after being killed, so it becomes impossible to properly use netbook-launcher once this happens.

Platform: Asus eeePC 700
desktop-switcher 0.5.6-0ubuntu1
gnome-panel 1:2.28.0.0-0ubuntu1
netbook-launcher 2.1.9-0ubuntu2

[Tuna Soncul (tsoncul)]

Architecture: i386
CheckboxSubmission: 8dcf197f5bda0ea5efeac459d64b2c59
CheckboxSystem: b62ae224500b03a9fc2c9b6caf3feb14
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
Package: desktop-switcher 0.5.6-0ubuntu1
PackageArchitecture: i386
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-10.34-generic
Tags: ubuntu-unr
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-10-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[Tuna Soncul (tsoncul)]

Output to gconftool-2 -R /apps/panel

[Loïc Minier (lool)]

These were the gconf settings after switching with desktop-switcher to netbook mode

[Neil J. Patel (njpatel)]

Hi, please try the following:

1. Use desktop-switcher to switch back to classic mode (2 panels, no launcher)
2. Make sure you have a fully updated system, there was a desktop-switcher update yesterday
3. rm -rf ~/.config/desktop-switcher
4. Use desktop switcher to switch back to netbook mode

Hopefully you'll only have the one default netbook panel at this point.

Let me know how it goes. Also, it would be great if, after that, you could switch once more to classic and switch back again, just to make sure it's all working.

[Tuna Soncul (tsoncul)]

Hi,

I tried re-running the test with your instructions. The problem, as described, has gone away; with another problem coming up.

Switching from the classic mode to netbook mode works flawlessly now, nothing to complain about. Switching from netbook to classic mode has some weird behavior:

- When Firefox is running, switching to classic mode ends up with what's happening in screenshot 1: No top panel, firefox unmaximizes with no title bar, and the lower and rightmost parts are unresponsive. When the screenshot was taken, the scrollbars in the middle of the screen were working, as well as the rest of that firefox screen. Simply quitting firefox fixes this behavior.
This exact thing also happens when you type 'metacity --replace' in terminal.

- As in screenshot 2, the title bars are missing from some applications (also in gedit, rhythmbox and dialog screens like save as; but not firefox or terminal, for example.) Restarts have no effect on this.

This is with desktop-switcher 0.5.8-0ubuntu1.

[Tuna Soncul (tsoncul)]

Attachment 2 for the above comment.

[Paul Larson (pwlars)]

@tuna, I'd like to leave this open for now in case it reappears and you can get the additional information that was requested. The new problems you described are in a new bug now, bug #440092. Please feel free to comment or add to it.

[nick parlante (nick-parlante)]

I'm afraid I still have consistent crashing problems with the Desktop Switcher applet. This is a fresh install of UNR karmic beta 1, then applying all the current auto updates (as of Oct 6) on an eee pc 1005ha. Most of the time it locks up, but I got one .crash log.

The following crash sequence is pretty repeatable on this machine:

1. Be in classic mode
2. Open a terminal, just so some program is running
3. Switch to netbook desktop mode ... this works
4. Try to switch back to classic desktop

The netbook desktop disappears, the terminal app takes over the whole screen, but with a drawing glitch of 2 vertical scroll bars. The classic desktop menu elements are not present ... the menu at the top of the screen is from the terminal, so it all looks wrong. Clicking or typing in the terminal does not work. However, the close-window menu command does sortof work in the terminal .. the window disappears enough to reveal the classic menus at the top (I guess they were just covered), but the main terminal window does not erase, so things look wrong, with the mid-click menu and terminal window contents left on screen. From here, trying to switch back to netbook desktop just freezes. Trying to do a restart gives the warning window "UNR Launcher not responding" .. so I would guess that the UNR Launcher is getting stuck during the switch and causing all these other problems.

For the .crash log, I was switching desktop modes but I don't recall which direction. I had not yet deleted the launcher pref file, so there's a chance the crash is due to my earlier testing, but I think it's most likely the same problem as above.

[nick parlante (nick-parlante)]

I ran Auto-Update today (Oct 9) on karmic beta 1 to check up on this bug.
dpkg -l gives...
desktop-switch 0.5.8-0ubuntu2
netbook-launch 2.1.10-0ubuntu

Unfortunately following the steps above gives the same visual glitches upon switching back standard desktop mode, and then netbook-launcher crashes, and here's the trace:

ProcStatus:
 Name: netbook-launche
 State: S (sleeping)
 Tgid: 1686
 Pid: 1686
 PPid: 1
 TracerPid: 0
 Uid: 1000 1000 1000 1000
 Gid: 1000 1000 1000 1000
 FDSize: 32
 Groups: 4 20 24 46 104 115 122 1000
 VmPeak: 69504 kB
 VmSize: 68564 kB
 VmLck: 0 kB
 VmHWM: 28184 kB
 VmRSS: 27228 kB
 VmData: 25928 kB
 VmStk: 108 kB
 VmExe: 132 kB
 VmLib: 26536 kB
 VmPTE: 144 kB
 Threads: 1
 SigQ: 0/16382
 SigPnd: 0000000000000000
 ShdPnd: 0000000000000000
 SigBlk: 0000000000000000
 SigIgn: 0000000000001000
 SigCgt: 0000000180004a03
 CapInh: 0000000000000000
 CapPrm: 0000000000000000
 CapEff: 0000000000000000
 CapBnd: ffffffffffffffff
 Cpus_allowed: 3
 Cpus_allowed_list: 0-1
 Mems_allowed: 1
 Mems_allowed_list: 0
 voluntary_ctxt_switches: 2132
 nonvoluntary_ctxt_switches: 421
Signal: 11
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-13-generic i686
UserGroups: adm admin cdrom dialout lpadmin plugdev sambashare

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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