Gnome panel freezes when connecting projector

[Toon Verwaest]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

When I activate a projector with nvidia-settings which has lower resolution than my laptop screen, the gnome-panel freezes. The way to reactivate the panel seems to be moving it to the projector. When I move it back from there it keeps on working; until I deactivate the projector. At that point, depending where the panel comes from, it freezes again or not.

It doesn't crash so I can't give a more detailed report (or I don't know how to).

This is happening on 9.04 alpha 6, but as far as I remember it also happened on 8.10.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for your bug report. Please try to obtain a backtrace of the freeze http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash and attach the file to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

[Toon Verwaest (tverwaes)]

How do I make sure that I run the program in gdb? In other words, how can I kill it temporarily without it automatically coming up before I can start it in gdb? xkill doesn't keep it dead long enough :)

[Toon Verwaest (tverwaes)]

Ok, stupid me, --replace obviously did the trick. Info in attachment.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

there's no hang on the trace you attached, may you please try again? thanks you.

[Toon Verwaest (tverwaes)]

I get similar results. It is probably useful to specify (sorry, I forgot before) that only the view freezes. It still responds normally to input. I can press on all the buttons and select applications, I just don't see anything happening to the bar itself, like the hover-over information; the clock visually freezes; and the list of open applications remains the same. Apparently it still reacts normally for input as the application buttons move around as I open/close applications.

If you look at the attachment; all those CRITICAL messages pop up at the moment I activate the projector.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

there is no hang is those log

[Toon Verwaest (tverwaes)]

I can assure you that it still hangs. If you know a better way of figuring out why it's really freezing, be my guest and inform you. I always have to find a terminal to manually kill the gnome-panel so that it re-spawns and starts working again.

As I already stated before, only the "view" of the gnome-panel freezes; it's still responsive as normal; so if I remember where which applications are open I can click on them and they will come to the foreground; but I don't see any changes in the view of the gnome-panel anymore.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

somebody having the issue could perhaps open a bug on http://bugzilla.gnome.org where the software writters will read it too?

[Toon Verwaest (tverwaes)]

http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=582465

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for sending the bug to GNOME

[Martin Wildam (mwildam)]

Last week I was on a presentation connecting to a beamer.
Not just the panel frozen - complete desktop - had to restart gdm.

Fortunately it happened only the first time, then while connected it worked (although xrandr did not find the correct resoluton).