Restarting gnome-shell displays images of applications running on other workspaces

[Paul White]

Restarting gnome-shell with 'Alt-F2,r and enter' displays images of applications running on other workspaces which are not clickable.

Steps to reproduce:

1) Enable multiple workspaces
2) Start an application on each workspace
3) From any workspace, restart gnome-shell with 'Alt-F2, r and enter'

Expected outcome:

As with Ubuntu 18.04, each application is displayed only the workspace on which it was started.

Actual outcome:

All applications are displayed on the current workspace. The applications running on other workspaces are displayed as images, i.e. they cannot be 'clicked' but he 'wanted' application, the dock, top bar etc all function correctly.

Workaround:

To remove the unwanted images move to another workspace and return.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 19.04
Package: gnome-shell 3.32.0-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.0.0-7.8-generic 5.0.0
Uname: Linux 5.0.0-7-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu23
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Wed Mar 13 10:15:45 2019
DisplayManager: gdm3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-01-20 (51 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 19.04 "Disco Dingo" - Alpha amd64 (20190120)
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This is partly correct behaviour :)

You need to know two things:

 1. In Xorg sessions, Xorg is your display server so killing/restarting gnome-shell does not kill the apps. They stay running and connected to Xorg.

 2. Workspaces don't really exist. They are emulated by gnome-shell while is running, by just hiding/moving windows around.

With that in mind, what you are seeing is somewhat correct behaviour. If gnome-shell dies or restarts then you return to the basic setup of just apps and Xorg running, on your single display. And since gnome-shell (re)started after the apps it has no memory of which virtual workspace you had them on previously. So they all appear on the same workspace.

That all said, app windows should be clickable. If they are not then it sounds like you've found a reliable way to trigger bug 1181666. That probably makes this a duplicate of bug 1181666. Do you agree?

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thanks for your explanation of how gnome-shell workspaces work or should work.

I'm not seeing this problem with Ubuntu 18.04 where all applications remain visible on the workspace that they are on before gnome-shell is restarted. I don't use Ubuntu 18.10 due to gnome-shell crashing when restarted: bug 1796607.

I don't think this is a duplicate of bug 1181666 as it is only the windows that gnome-shell has failed to hide that are not clickable. The 'wanted' application, the dock and top bar all function correctly.

I'll update the bug description a little.

[Ubuntu QA Website (ubuntuqa)]

This bug has been reported on the Ubuntu ISO testing tracker.

A list of all reports related to this bug can be found here:
http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/qatracker/reports/bugs/1819890

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

No problem to keep this bug separate. That's why we have the tag 'noclick', to group similar bugs:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-shell/+bugs?field.tag=noclick

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Indeed, confirmed, it looks like an upstream regression and would be nice if someone could report it on https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/issues

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Reported upstream as requested.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks!

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Upstream issue #1059 was closed as being a duplicate of https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/issues/572. Updating upstream bug task and reassigning Ubuntu task. Still a problem in Ubuntu 19.10.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package mutter - 3.36.0-2ubuntu1

---------------
mutter (3.36.0-2ubuntu1) focal; urgency=medium

  * Merge with debian. Remaining changes:
    + debian/control:
      - Update VCS flags to point to ubuntu salsa branch
    + 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
  * d/p/clutter-master-clock-default-Sync-timelines-to-hardware-v.patch:
    - Improves smoothness and reduce input-to-output latency
      levels (LP: #1862308)
  * debian/libmutter-6-0.symbols:
    - Update as per background mipmap levels patch symbol addition
  * Ubuntu bugs resolved since 3.35.91-1ubuntu1:
    - Higher than necessary CPU usage on mouse movement (LP: #1848951)
    - No mouse cursor drawn for radeon in Wayland sessions (LP: #1867080)
    - Restarting displays apps running on other workspaces (LP: #1819890)
    - Volume/brightness OSD make fullscreen video flicker (LP: #1828697)

mutter (3.36.0-2) experimental; urgency=medium

  * control: Build against gnome-desktop 3.36 and break old gnome-shell. So we
    get dependencies on libgnome-desktop-3-19. Otherwise we get two different
    versions of gnome-desktop loaded into GNOME Shell, which crashes. Break
    old gnome-shell for the inverse reason - it needs to be upgraded otherwise
    we get the mismatch the other way around.

mutter (3.36.0-1) experimental; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release
    + Fix placement of popup windows in multi-monitor setups
    + Fix invisible mouse cursor on some hardware
    + Updated translations

mutter (3.35.92-1) experimental; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release
    + Add side channel for starting required X11 services
    + Allow remote desktop services to inhibit animations
    + Avoid flicker when (un)redirecting windows
    + Fix clipping glitches in long text entries
    + Fix visibility of initially hidden windows
    + Implement scaled/transformed hardware cursors
    + Let BindConstraints update the preferred size
    + Make check-alive timeouts configurable
    + Make each stage view correspond to a single CRTC
    + Make Xwayland startup asynchronous
    + Ping windows on every window focus
    + Remove overhead from hot code paths
    + Support synchronized wayland popup moving
    + Update screen-cast code to PipeWire 0.3 API
    + Use DMA buffers for screencasting if possible
  * d/p/*: Rebase
  * rules: Disable remote-desktop temporarily. This now requires pipewire 0.3
    which is not packaged yet and needs to be worked on
  * control: Bump wayland-protocols dep to 1.19 per meson.build
  * debian/libmutter-6-0.symbols: Add new symbols for this release. One symbol
    which was introduced in .90 was dropped; -6's ABI is not stable yet.

 -- Marco Trevisan (Treviño) <email address hidden> Thu, 19 Mar 2020 15:51:05 +0000

[Ayush Agarwal (ayushidagarwal)]

I have the same issue

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This bug was closed almost 9 months ago so if you still have problems then please open a new bug.