Wireless network list is broken when there are many networks

[Oded Arbel]

Binary package hint: network-manager

When opening the wireless network list by clicking on the network manager applet icon, if there are more wireless networks seen then can fit in the menu on the screen (also probably affected by screen size) then the network list menu breaks: it shows an empty menu with scroll arrows and one needs to scroll up to see the entire list.

Attached screenshot of the menu when it first opens - with nothing visible. Additional information follows shortly

[Oded Arbel (oded-geek)]

Using the top scroll arrow I can scroll up and start to see the actual list

[Oded Arbel (oded-geek)]

The middle of the list - as you can see its larger then the screen: the top and bottom of the menu can't be seen

[Oded Arbel (oded-geek)]

nm-tool output listing all of the networks seen by the computer - there are 48 of those.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

driver issue., what chipset/driver are you using? does this still happen in hardy or intrepid?

[Oded Arbel (oded-geek)]

I'm using ipw2200, and I observed this in both Hardy and Intrepid (The original report is against Hardy).

How exactly is that a driver issue ?! The driver is functioning fine, its just the GNOME menu implementation that can't handle so many items.

I've seen similar behaviour in many other applications - when a menu needs to be opened where there are too many items to fit from the mouse click to the bottom of the screen, it adds scroll buttons to the menu but fails to align the initial scroll view correctly so that some, most or all of the menu visible is empty. The problem is very rare in NetworkManager as the menu always appears from the top of the screen, but with a small screen (most laptops are 1024x768) and large enough number of networks (driving around the city center will get you that) this bug can be reproduced successfully.

[Oded Arbel (oded-geek)]

Still seeing this with Karmic

[Bryan Wu (cooloney)]

Unfortunately it seems this bug is still an issue. Can you confirm this issue exists with the most recent Jaunty Jackalope 9.04 release - http://www.ubuntu.com/news/ubuntu-9.04-desktop . If the issue remains in Jaunty, Please run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux-image-2.6.28-11-generic <bug #>

If you could also test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine this issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

[Oded Arbel (oded-geek)]

Why is the requirement for kernel logs? The problem isn't that there are too many networks listed - that is on purpose.

This is clearly a GTK issue - it can be observed in many other applications with large menus. For example, in the attached screenshot you can see how the metacity window menu behaves when the gtk-demo application is positioned near the bottom of the screen.

This is the exact same problem I with the wireless network list - if the menu thinks it does not have enough room to display all the items(*), then it shows the menu with scrolling arrows but it starts with some items scrolled down and out of view even though there is enough free space in the menu to show them. The more items there are and the less room there is, the more the menu is scrolled incorrectly. With enough items - as can be seen in the first screenshot - nothing is shown on the screen.

(*) even if it does have enough room as can be seen in the screenshot, but this is another issue all together.

[Oded Arbel (oded-geek)]

Setting correct values. I forgot to mention that this problem is in Karmic as well.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thanks for the bug report. This particular bug has already been reported into our bug tracking system, but please feel free to report any further bugs you find.