metacity fails to show any window decorations after dist-upgrade from edgy to feisty

[Albert Cardona]

Binary package hint: metacity

metacity fails to show any window decorations after dist-upgrade from edgy to feisty

Exactly that: metacity opens, no errors on the logs, and yet there are no window frames or edges or buttons.
Plus, windows don't get focus when clicked.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug. Looks like it's not running. Do you have anything to .xsessions-errors? Does it happen with an another user?

[Albert Cardona (cardona)]

Launching

$ metacity &

solves the problem. But there are others. For example, my session should launch an xterm -it does so, AFTER about a minute an a half (this is a core2 duo 2.33GHz Thinkpad T60p, and edgy did so in a split second). Same with gnome splash: remains there forever, until clicked.

See attached .xsession-errors.

Thanks for having a look at this.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Did you use a non official gnome-compiz-manager since you installed Ubuntu? Does moving .dmrc somewhere else fix the bug?

[Albert Cardona (cardona)]

Yes: in the past I installed, used for a week or so, and then uninstalled with --purge) beryl and Xgl.

I have tried to move .dmrc elsewhere to no avail. On relogin to a gnome session, a new .dmrc gets created with a 'default' instead of 'gnome' session.

After the last dist-upgrade yesterday, gnome does not even boot fully: the screen remains orange for at least 2 minutes, with the gnome splash showing two icons and "Metacity window manager" as text, which disappears on click. The desktop never shows. I have to kill the X server to get out.

So matters got worse.

Albert

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

do you have a .gnomerc?

[Albert Cardona (cardona)]

Thank you! Finally! I knew it had to be some silly setting -dapper to edgy had the same problem with gtk2 apps: some silly setting.
So I moved .gnomerc to the trash and finally my gnome desktop is working properly.

The file ,gnomerc contained a dozen white lines and this one line:

export WINDOW_MANAGER=~/.gnome-compiz-manager/openbox

Thank you for guiding me in finding this little but totally disruptive setting! I was fearing I would have to reinstall the root partition altogether.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

That's due to gnome-compiz-manager then, do you use a non official version on edgy?

[Albert Cardona (cardona)]

Yes, as I said above I DID use an unofficial compiz, but I removed it. Its settings were left behind.