Notification area does not work with dual head

[Jean Privat]

I have a dual head screen (two graphic cards and no xinerama, so my displays are
:0.0 and :0.1).
Gnome panel correctly manage those two displays except for the notification area:
it's ok for application launched on :0.0 that handle notification area (tested
with rhytmbox, gaim and gdesklets)
but when I launch them from :0.1, no icon apears in the notification area.

I try with two gnome-panels (one by display) and two notification applets (one
by panel). I also try with only one notification applet (on the :0.0 panel).

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115704: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115704

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

are you using warty or hoary ?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

There is a bug upstream about this:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115704

[Jamie Wilkinson (jaq-spacepants)]

I am using Xinerama; I just installed Hoary from the official CD, and copied the
screen and display sections to make it dualheaded (see attachment), and logged
out/in, and now I have 4 panels; one menu+systray panel at the top of each
screen and one taskbar+windowchooser panel at the bottom. Both have identical
appearance -- I have a menu at the top left of both screens, date at the top
right of both screens, though the second taskbar has no windows in its list...

oh wow, you can't even drag windows from one screen to the other. that's retarded.

[Jamie Wilkinson (jaq-spacepants)]

(In reply to comment #3)
> I am using Xinerama; I just installed Hoary from the official CD, and copied the
> screen and display sections to make it dualheaded (see attachment), and logged
> out/in, and now I have 4 panels; one menu+systray panel at the top of each
> screen and one taskbar+windowchooser panel at the bottom. Both have identical
> appearance -- I have a menu at the top left of both screens, date at the top
> right of both screens, though the second taskbar has no windows in its list...
>
> oh wow, you can't even drag windows from one screen to the other. that's
retarded.

forget that, it turns out i'm the retard, and forgot the Xinerama option in
ServerFlags :(

[Lionel Dricot (ploum-deactivatedaccount)]

confirmed upstream

[Jonathan Carter (jonathan)]

Does this problem persist in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS?

[Kirtis Bakalarczyk (kirtis-bakalarczyk)]

I have a very similar problem in 6.06. I'm using the TV-out on my 7800 to use my TV as a second monitor (for MythTV). The icons that would normally be in the notification area show up in their own small window on the first monitor. It doesn't always do this, but i haven't figured out what causes it yet.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

might be fixed upstream, to try with 2.15.92

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could anybody try on edgy if that's still an issue?

[Daniel Holbach (dholbach)]

No complaints, closing the bug - please reopen if it still happens.

[fisherman783 (cjf10)]

I'm running a clean install of Edgy and am experiencing this problem exactly as described.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

This problem is still a problem as of today with Feisty Fawn. Is there any progress on this bug? It is beginning to become a problem—I have two notification areas on each of my workspaces (:0.0 and :0.1, same configuration as above with no Xinerama, see attached X.org configuration), but the applications that are started on the secondary screen (display 0, screen 1, :0.1) do not register with either the notification area on the main display (:0.0) or the secondary display (:0.1), going away into the ether it would appear.

In this way, I have to resort to the command line to kill applicaitons (such as the OpenOffice.org quickstarter) which should be able to attach to the Notification Area, but don't on a dual-head setup on the secondary monitor.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

Re-opening per request to re-open if still an issue. Being closed isn't going to help anyone. :-)

[Gregg (gclaeys)]

I have got the same Problem :
Application I launch in second screen do not register in notification area(nto the first screen one or the second screen one).

If I launch the apps in the First screen it register to the 1st screen notification area.

Ubuntu 7.04 beta Feisty Fawn
DUAL DESKTOP mode
Linuk Kernel : 2.6.20-14-generic
2007 i686 GNU/Linux
Video Card : Ati X700
Gnome version 2.18.0

[Eddie Hung (eddieh)]

I can confirm too: latest Feisty, running Gnome.

I'm not too familiar with the gnome bug tracker, but in the link posted above the bug is marked as resolved, and it most certainly isn't!

I've tried both GAIM and Banshee and they both don't appear in my :0.1 notification area.

[Juergen (juergen-eckel)]

I also confirm the bug.
I am using latest Feisty and Gnome.

[Albrecht Mühlenschulte (a7p)]

I cannot see which further information could be needed, neither it seems to be difficult to reproduce -> confirmed.

[Alex F (frase)]

PeopleWithThisProblem++;

I just finally got dual monitors working on my dualhead nVidia card. I am not using TwinView or Xinerama, because I want to be able to run games fullscreen on the primary display without it affecting the secondary display at all. (Aside: I don't need to be able to "drag" windows between screens, but it would be nice to right-click a window title bar and 'send-to' the other screen; still haven't figured that one out)

If I launch a program on the primary display, it binds to the primary display's notification area properly. If I launch on the secondary display, the secondary display's notification area remains empty.

Ideally, I would like the option for the two displays to "share" the same notification area (so anything that binds to it from either display shows up on both), with maybe the extra candy that clicking a notification icon will bring the associated window to the display where it was clicked, no matter which display it was launched from.

[Alex F (frase)]

Sorry, forgot some details:

Ubuntu Feisty 7.04, fresh download and install this week. It makes me sad that this bug report is so old and yet persists.

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

On Sat, 2007-06-23 at 18:28 +0000, Alex F wrote:

> Ideally, I would like the option for the two displays to "share" the
> same notification area (so anything that binds to it from either
> display
> shows up on both), with maybe the extra candy that clicking a
> notification icon will bring the associated window to the display
> where
> it was clicked, no matter which display it was launched from.

Ahh, that would be nice. Unfortunately, I don't know that it would be
possible given the way that X11 works. Each screen connected and active
(using "standard" multiple display support) is a different $DISPLAY all
of its own. This means that it should be autonomous, for example with
the tray notification areas in each window. Some programs (such as
Metacity) can share information between both displays because it is
specifically written to be aware of how to handle them.

If you open a terminal on each screen, you'll notice that the $DISPLAY
on the first one is :0.0 and on the second one is :0.1---which means
that you can do something like:

$ DISPLAY=:0.1 firefox

... in a terminal on your primary display, and it will bring Firefox up
on the second display (that is, assuming that you do not have an already
running Firefox on the first display; there is a bug somewhere in
Launchpad for that issue, too).

In thinking about it, it seems that the multiple-display issues should
be abstracted at a lower-level, perhaps such as GTK+, so that all GTK+
applications are automatically aware of multiple X11 screens and able to
take advantage of them in a consistent manner. Right now, as I
understand it, each application that wants to be aware of multiple X11
screens has to be taught to be aware of them independently.

  --- Mike

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                          Jabber IM:
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[Alex F (frase)]

Still, it seems to me that even with the current architecture, the application itself does not need to be aware of multiple screens: X11 of course is, therefore the window manager can be, therefore the window manager ought to be able to handle the gymnastics of keeping track of application/notification/displayscreen linkages without troubling the application at all, and (it seems to me) without even bothering the GTK+ rendering system with it. GTK+ just has to render GUI elements at whatever coordinates of whatever device the window manager dictates.

A window titlebar already has send-to-workspace functions that (I assume) are handled by the window manager, and notification icons must already have some linkage to the application process which controls the window associated with the icon. Therefore, the window manager ought to be able to display the same notification-icon-list on each display, and when one is clicked, ought to be able to figure out which display the associated window is already on and move it to the display where the click happened, if necessary.

Granted, I don't really know much about the guts of this system, so maybe there's some big architectural obstacle I'm not accounting for, but what I'm describing seems totally doable given what I understand to be the GUI hierarchy.

Maybe the problem is that separate X11 display-screens (:0.0 vs :0.1 as you mentioned) have thus far been designed to be TOO autonomous? I can see situations where it would make sense to make them separate (you could have a different user logged in to each, in a different room even, without them interfering with eachother, etc).

But clearly there is also a need for slightly less independent alternate displays; maybe a new abstraction level needs to be established that allows for only one user session among several displays (the standard desktop dual-monitor setup), but in return allows for more interaction between the two (like shared notification, etc)?

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

On Sat, 2007-06-23 at 20:58 +0000, Alex F wrote:

> Still, it seems to me that even with the current architecture, the
> application itself does not need to be aware of multiple screens: X11
> of
> course is, therefore the window manager can be, therefore the window
> manager ought to be able to handle the gymnastics of keeping track of
> application/notification/displayscreen linkages without troubling the
> application at all, and (it seems to me) without even bothering the
> GTK+
> rendering system with it. GTK+ just has to render GUI elements at
> whatever coordinates of whatever device the window manager dictates.
>
> A window titlebar already has send-to-workspace functions that (I
> assume) are handled by the window manager, and notification icons must
> already have some linkage to the application process which controls
> the
> window associated with the icon. Therefore, the window manager ought
> to
> be able to display the same notification-icon-list on each display,
> and
> when one is clicked, ought to be able to figure out which display the
> associated window is already on and move it to the display where the
> click happened, if necessary.

Workspaces are a Window Manager concept, not so much an X11 concept. It
depends on what level the thing takes place at... applications connect
to a $DISPLAY, and the window manager running on $DISPLAY then decorates
the window for the application, at its most basic.

You can even have different WMs on :0.0 and :0.1 if you want—it gives
people room to really customize things, which is why I like the layout.
Even so, there are some issues; like this bug, like the fact that
Epiphany and Firefox cannot be run on both displays at the same time,
and so forth. (Then again, for at least Firefox, anyway, the same
applies to different X11 sessions entirely; if you have :0.0 and :1.0
running for the same user, at least FF will error telling you that an
instance is already running somewhere else.)

> Granted, I don't really know much about the guts of this system, so
> maybe there's some big architectural obstacle I'm not accounting for,
> but what I'm describing seems totally doable given what I understand
> to
> be the GUI hierarchy.
>
> Maybe the problem is that separate X11 display-screens (:0.0 vs :0.1
> as
> you mentioned) have thus far been designed to be TOO autonomous? I
> can
> see situations where it would make sense to make them separate (you
> could have a different user logged in to each, in a different room
> even,
> without them interfering with eachother, etc).

This autonomousity lends itself to being quite flexible. Of course, the
flexibility comes at the cost of the application-layer logic having to
do slightly more to deal with it. I think that the way it works
currently (at least in this respect) is a good thing, and besides, one
distribution of the GNU/Linux system wouldn't dare change that—it would
break compatibility with everything else, and take away some of the
wonderful features of X11, like the ability to remote it without using
something like VNC.

> But clearly there is also a need for slightly less independent
> alternate
> displays; maybe a new abstraction l...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

This bug is about the notification area only and has been closed upstream, doing the same with the distribution task. Feel free open a new bug if you still have it on Ubuntu 7.04

[Michael B. Trausch (mtrausch)]

On Sun, 2007-06-24 at 09:28 -0000, Sebastien Bacher wrote:

> This bug is about the notification area only and has been closed
> upstream, doing the same with the distribution task. Feel free open a
> new bug if you still have it on Ubuntu 7.04
>
> ** Changed in: gnome-panel (Ubuntu)
> Status: Confirmed => Fix Released

On Sat, 23 Jun 2007 18:29:10 -0000, Alex F <email address hidden> wrote:

> Sorry, forgot some details:
>
> Ubuntu Feisty 7.04, fresh download and install this week. It makes me
> sad that this bug report is so old and yet persists.

Yes, it is still an issue with Feisty Fawn; there are even additional
comments on the upstream bug about that.

It seems that this is going to be one of those stubborn issues...
perhaps a bug asking that GTK+ be fixed would be better? Do you have
any insight on that, Sebastien?

    — Mike

--
Michael B. Trausch
           <email address hidden>
Phone: [phone]
                          Jabber IM:
           <email address hidden>
Demand Freedom! Use open and free protocols, standards, and software!
Support free speech---it is the most valuable freedom we have!

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

No idea on the bug, I don't have a multiscreen setup to work on it

[Johnathon (kirrus)]

I have opened a new Bug, #128735 as requested. Having this problem on both our dual-screen machines here.