Themes and font settings don’t apply to X apps running in Wayland (g-s-d 3.33.90 → 3.33.92 regression)

[Anders Kaseorg]

After upgrading gnome-settings-daemon from 3.33.90-1ubuntu2 to 3.33.92-1ubuntu1, my GTK theme and font settings selected with gnome-tweaks are no longer applied to X11 applications when running in a Wayland session (I tried Firefox and Emacs). This seems to be because gsd-xsettings is not running.

Known workarounds:
• downgrade gnome-settings-daemon to 3.33.90-1ubuntu2 and reboot; or
• use Xorg instead of Wayland; or
• manually start /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gsd-xsettings.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.10
Package: gnome-settings-daemon 3.33.92-1ubuntu1
Uname: Linux 5.2.11-050211-lowlatency x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: openafs
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu7
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Sep 6 17:24:02 2019
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-02-19 (1295 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu-GNOME 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Alpha amd64 (20160218)
SourcePackage: gnome-settings-daemon
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to eoan on 2019-06-23 (75 days ago)

[Iain Lane (laney)]

Thanks Anders. I'm hoping this is fixed by the patches from https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/merge_requests/680 - if you're able to build your own gnome-shell package, maybe you could try those commits? Otherwise, we should get them in the distro shortly (this week).

[Anders Kaseorg (andersk)]

Hmm, I upgraded mutter from eoan-proposed and gnome-shell from eoan-proposed plus those three commits (https://launchpad.net/~andersk/+archive/ubuntu/ppa, if you want to check my work), but it didn’t resolve the problem. Even after a reboot, gsd-xsettings doesn’t start and X11 applications don’t get themed.

$ dpkg-query -W gir1.2-mutter-5 libmutter-5-0 mutter mutter-common gnome-shell gnome-shell-common
gir1.2-mutter-5:amd64 3.33.92-1ubuntu1
gnome-shell 3.33.92-1ubuntu1andersk1
gnome-shell-common 3.33.92-1ubuntu1andersk1
libmutter-5-0:amd64 3.33.92-1ubuntu1
mutter 3.33.92-1ubuntu1
mutter-common 3.33.92-1ubuntu1

$ strings /usr/lib/gnome-shell/libgnome-shell.so | grep x11-display
        global.display.connect('x11-display-opened', () => {
        global.display.connect('x11-display-closing', () => {

$ systemctl --user status gnome-session-x11-services.target gsd-xsettings.target gsd-xsettings.service
● gnome-session-x11-services.target - GNOME session X11 services
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/gnome-session-x11-services.target; static; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)

● gsd-xsettings.target - GNOME XSettings
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/gsd-xsettings.target; static; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)

● gsd-xsettings.service - GNOME XSettings
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/gsd-xsettings.service; static; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: inactive (dead)

[Anders Kaseorg (andersk)]

By adding some debugging output to mutter and gnome-shell I verified that mutter emits the x11-display-opened signal before gnome-shell is able to connect a handler for it, and the handler never runs.

(Possibly things would be different in the experimental autostart-xwayland mode, but the whole system froze when I tried to log in with that enabled.)

[Anders Kaseorg (andersk)]

This is fixed by https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/merge_requests/792 (I tested 850ef518795dcc20d3b9a4f661f70ff8d0ddacb2).

[Iain Lane (laney)]

Taken that patch, thanks!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package mutter - 3.34.0-2ubuntu1

---------------
mutter (3.34.0-2ubuntu1) eoan; urgency=medium

  * Merge with debian. Remaining changes:
    + debian/control:
      - Update VCS flags to point to launchpad
      - Update maintainer to ubuntu
    + debian/gbp.conf: update branch to point to ubuntu/master
    + debian/patches/x11-Add-support-for-fractional-scaling-using-Randr.patch:
      - X11: Add support for fractional scaling using Randr

mutter (3.34.0-2) experimental; urgency=medium

  * d/p/core-Split-x11-display-initialization-in-2-signals.patch: Cherry-pick.
    Fixes starting up of gsd-xsettings on Wayland. (LP: #1843107)

 -- Iain Lane <email address hidden> Fri, 13 Sep 2019 11:13:49 +0100