calendar applet and user switch / logout applet are frequently cutoff and unusable

[Gerhard Radatz]

Binary package hint: gnome-panel

On my desktop, the calendar applet and/or the user switch/logout applet very often display only half of their widget area. For the calendar applet, this means that the time information is missing. For the user switch applet, this means that there is no logout button.

In previous versions of Ubuntu, I also had problems with the panel: Frequently (but not always) the top and bottom panel were reverted after logging in. I had to call "gnome-panel --replace" in a console to reload the panel. This always fixed the issue.

In Karmic there seems to be a patch for the reverted panels, because sometimes when logging in I can observe that the top and bottom panels are exchanged, but after a few seconds they automatically rearrange themselves to be on the right place again.

"gnome-panel --replace" also fixes the "cutoff" applets. However, this is a new and very annoying bug, which is one of the sort which prevents "non-power-users" from using Ubuntu. How should I tell my friends "Ubuntu is great, but occasionally you will not have an opportunity to logout anymore"???

See the screenshot attached.
Additional infos: I have the nvidia graphics driver and compiz running.

Please let me know if I can provide some further information for tracking down this problem.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: gnome-panel 1:2.30.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-22.36-generic 2.6.32.11+drm33.2
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-22-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sun Jun 13 09:31:35 2010
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-panel
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=de_AT:de
 LANG=de_AT.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-panel
XsessionErrors:
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:2038): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed
 (gnome-terminal:2034): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_accel_map_unlock_path: assertion `entry != NULL && entry->lock_count > 0' failed

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported, but feel free to report any other bugs you find.

[Gerhard Radatz (gerhard-radatz)]

Hello Sebastien, could you please provide a link to the report which already describes this bug? I would like to trace any fixes on this bug, and just marking this one as "Invalid" was not that helpful...

Thanks, Gerhard

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

could you try to look for the number yourself? we got hundred of duplicates every month and I don't want to spend my days searching for number to copy in those bugs, that's the most reported bug on this component you should be able to find the number, if you don't let me know how you search and we can figure what doesn't work for you and maybe in launchpad

[Gerhard Radatz (gerhard-radatz)]

Sorry, Sebastien, I do not want to be impolite, but I would not have filed this bug if I had found a similiar one on launchpad already. So if you mark this bug as invalid because it already is reported elsewhere, I think it is also part of your job to file the duplicate's number here.

I searched for keywords as "user switch applet" or "calendar applet" and had no success. That said, I also do not want to spend my days on reporting such evident and annoying bugs if I do know that they are already reported.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

> So if you mark this bug as invalid because it already is reported elsewhere, I think it is also part of your job to file the duplicate's number here.

Sorry but my job is to get the Ubuntu Desktop as solid and nicely working as we can and the way to get there is to fix issues not to spend days searching for duplicates numbers. I understand the situation is suboptimal but with limited manpower we can search for numbers for every duplicates files, so either we let the buglist become useless because it gets all those known duplicates still open or we close the bugs, I've decided for the second way

[Gerhard Radatz (gerhard-radatz)]

Ok, Sebastien, I think we both face the same problem: We cannot find the right bug report for the given bug in a suitable amount of time. You know that there is one (otherwise you wouldn't have closed the bug, I guess) while I did not.

I accept that the bug is already tracked *somewhere* else, but I think finding an existing bug should somehow be improved then. Hoping for better times to come...

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

see bug #439448