gnome-panel freeze on cascading contextual app-launcher menu

[viktor]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

I found this bug yesterday (up-to-date Lucid beta1 64bit) while right-clicking to try and remove directly some apps from the Gnome panel Applications menu (wishlist: menu-editor shortcut via contextual menu).

To reproduce:

1. Open the Applications menu
2. Open Graphics sub-menu (for instance, this is how I did and reproduced it but suspect it can work with any)
3. Chose an app launcher - I chose "Simple scanner" - and right click for contextual menu
4. Click so that one of the last contextual menus (i.e. Add as tray/menu) opens without highlighting either of the choices
5. wait for a couple of seconds with the whole cascading menus opened (Appplications/Graphics/app context menu/add tray) then roll over 1st two menus

There it is, gnome-panel freezes. You can no longer use it.
Very annoying: the Gnome Applications menu is frozen and always on top.

Very very annoying: Alt+F2 launches gnome-application-control (Launch application) but it is frozen so I needed to lanch system-monitor to restart gnome-panel.

UPDATE: reproduced with other menu launcher (OOo Writer for instance). It seems that following steps 1-4 above + rolling the mouse over the main (Applications) menu can cause the intermediate menu (Graphics, Office...) to close and thus "break the chain" with the still-opened contextual menu (two 'Add as' panes).

Note: it is important not to click elsewhere before the intermediate menu disapears, and just roll over the first 2 menu panes.
First the highlighted choice in pane #2 (intermediate between the main Application pane and the contextual menu) will disappear,
Then, back on the main pane menu, #2 will disappear altogether. Freeze should be noted exactly there (if you click on #2 before it disappears it just highlights another app-launcher and the bug doesn't occur).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, I don't confirm the issue there

[viktor (lfraisse)]

I reproduced it again after a while (still after fiddling around with Simple Scan).
I'll try to pintpoint what triggers this on my machine and try it with another menu app-launcher.

Running apps: Firefox, Calculator, Transmission
Additionnal steps on the path to reproducing: going several times thru the 5 steps described, creating a panel launcher then removing it from panel.

[viktor (lfraisse)]

Just updated the description since it seems I can reproduce the bug more consistently now when rolling over the first menu panes (without interfering with the right-click triggered 2 panes)

[viktor (lfraisse)]

Reproduced today (Apr-27 up-to-date lucid amd64 RC).

This is really not an important bug, yet it may occur to curious people exploring the linux desktop and thus give them a bad opinion. The panel freezes, keyboard doesn't work with alt+F2 (should I file a specific bug here?) so the user has to find a way to kill the panel processus. Closing the session is the most direct way.

[antoirehew (antoirehew-uk)]

I found this bug yesterday (up-to-date Ubuntu 10.10 32bit) while right-clicking to try and remove directly some apps from the Gnome panel Applications menu (wishlist: menu-editor shortcut via contextual menu).

To reproduce:

1. Open the Applications menu
2. Open Graphics sub-menu (for instance, this is how I did and reproduced it but suspect it can work with any)
3. Chose an app launcher - I chose "Simple scanner" - and right click for contextual menu
4. Click so that one of the last contextual menus (i.e. Add as tray/menu) opens without highlighting either of the choices
5. wait for a couple of seconds with the whole cascading menus opened (Appplications/Graphics/app context menu/add tray) then roll over 1st two menus

There it is, gnome-panel freezes. You can no longer use it.
Very annoying: the Gnome Applications menu is frozen and always on top.

Very very annoying: Alt+F2 launches gnome-application-control (Launch application) but it is frozen so I needed to lanch system-monitor to restart gnome-panel. Alt+F2 launched but it not response to any command that I typed it.

[Quentin Neill (qneill)]

Towards the statement "This is really not an important bug": it is blatantly visible to the end user; it is reproducible; it should be straightforward to fix (I'm not a Gnome developer though I have worked in other GUI systems).

The workaround (restarting gnome-panel: http://mylinuxnotebook.blogspot.com/2008/09/restart-gnome-panel.html) is not exactly trivial for a beginner.

Others have commented on finer-grained control of gnome-panel: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1574254&page=2

Perhaps a hot-key to control the gnome-panel is in order, including one that will restart it (in the case where key and mouse events are prevented from reaching it)?