When I try to change backgrounds to a previously selected background it won't let me open it.

[Jack Vanatta]

Found in 11.10 Oneiric 64 bit.
I changed my background to one of the stock backgrounds, when I went to change back to my normal background in my ~/Pictures directory it was grayed out and it would not let me open it. I had to make a copy of the file with a different name to open it.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please answer these questions:

* Is this reproducible?
* If so, what specific steps should we take to recreate this bug?

This will help us to find and resolve the problem.

[[e-mail] (sgage)]

If you go to select a wallpaper using the "+" option, you can navigate around the filesystem and pick something you like from wherever. Now change your wallpaper again to anything else. Now go back and try to pick the one you picked before - the "open" option is grayed out.

It seems that Ubuntu makes an copy in ~/.cache/gnome-control-center/backgrounds when you pick a wallpaper, giving it a catchy filename like "abe9c645b497f500c08a9225f9894f61af4a45c347eca62c6 f525d6d25578245", and you can't pick it again as long as it has that entry there. Just delete the entries there, and you can pick anything you like again.

Or, you will find that you can select it from "pictures" in the dropdown box - the file isn't copied from its original location into your Pictures directory, but a link seems to be generated by the wallpaper selection dialog code to the copy in your cache.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

ok, I still can't confirm that, I open the background selector, select one of the default image, click on the add icon, pick an image, that one gets selected and the combo is set on "pictures folder", I select another image there or change the combo to "wallpapers" and select and image, then I can select back the image I just added without issue

[[e-mail] (sgage)]

Yes, you can select the image you added from the 'pictures' combo. You can't go back with the '+' and get it from whatever directory you originally got it from (pick an image NOT in ~/Pictures). I didn't think the '+' function really added it to any particular list. You'd have thought it would add it to the 'wallpapers' displayed. I never realized it was getting added to 'Pictures Folder' because I have a lot of pictures in ~/Pictures and didn't notice. So I'd go back to the original directory and found I couldn't select it ('open' greyed out).

So it gets added to 'Pictures Folder', and is displayed along with everything else in ~/Pictures. But it's not in your ~/Pictures folder - it's been copied to ~/.cache/gnome-control-center/backgrounds with a weird name. The dialog box links that copy into the list that it offers under 'Pictures Folder'. It shows up with the weird name from the cache, which is unfortunate.

I think it would make more sense to add it to Wallpapers, with its original name. The whole process seems only half thought-out.

BTW, this issue is present in Precise as well.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue is an upstream one and it would be nice if somebody having it could send the bug to the developers of the software by following the instructions at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME. If you have done so, please tell us the number of the upstream bug (or the link), so we can add a bugwatch that will inform us about its status. Thanks in advance.