Ubuntu Dock popup menu in top left corner of the screen and won't go away

[Paul Eggert]

Every so often, typically when I'm using Thunderbird, I attempt to use the dock context menu to create a new window or something like that, and the "New Window" popup comes up, but does not work. Attempts to click on it have no effect. I cannot make the popup go away, other than by logging out and logging back in again (or rebooting).

I did not observe this problem until I installed Ubuntu 21.04, so I expect it's a glitch that is new to this release.

See attached screenshot for an example of the popup that won't go away.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 21.04
Package: gdm3 3.38.2.1-2ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.11.0-22.23-generic 5.11.21
Uname: Linux 5.11.0-22-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu65.1
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: unknown
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Wed Jun 30 10:57:22 2021
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-08-03 (1062 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04.1 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20180725)
SourcePackage: gdm3
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to hirsute on 2021-06-03 (26 days ago)

[Paul Eggert (eggert-cs)]

One other thing: when I'm using Thunderbird, I often cannot move groups of messages by using the mouse to drag and drop.

I have temporarily worked around this latter problem by switching to Xorg from the default Wayland. I hope this also works around the problem noted in the screenshot.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Judging by your screenshot, this is a bug in Ubuntu Dock. It has nothing to do with GDM at all.

Also if you'd like to discuss Thunderbird then please open a separate new bug.

[Paul Eggert (eggert-cs)]

"Also if you'd like to discuss Thunderbird then please open a separate new bug."

OK, I filed bug#1934243 for the Thunderbird issue. Thanks for diagnosing the original bug as a problem with Ubuntu Dock, not GDM.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This is a duplicate of bug 1785527.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Actually the other bug doesn't mention the corner of the screen so we should keep this open to make it easier to find.

[Akbarkhon Variskhanov (kbar)]

Here is a short screencast: https://launchpadlibrarian.net/566466758/Screencast%20from%2010-31-2021%2001%3A55%3A32%20PM.webm

[Marco Trevisan (Treviño) (3v1n0)]

Akbarkhon, do you have also a log from journalctl /usr/bin/gnome-shell for that?

[Bartłomiej Żogała (nusch)]

Please find attached my journalctl command output for your command above. But please be aware that despite I've issued it right after the issue happened for thunderbird the last message is older than 2 weeks.
At the same time I've spotted to interesting positions in 'journalctl -xe' output:
[...]
cze 16 16:06:55 xps13 gnome-shell[6114]: Window manager warning: last_user_time (1655388396) is greater than comparison timestamp (4819616). This most likely represents a buggy client sending inaccurate timestamps in messages such as _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW. Trying to work around...
[...]
cze 16 16:06:55 xps13 gnome-shell[6114]: Window manager warning: W108 appears to be one of the offending windows with a timestamp of 1655388396. Working around...
[...]
maybe some race condition is happening here. For me most often I'm getting the issue with thunderbird which in opposite to other windows have dynamic positions under context menu - like 'Create new message', 'Contacts'. Maybe generation of those takes different amount of time what breaks some assertions ?