Guake appears at the middle of the screen and not in the top of the screen

[Mariano]

Binary package hint: guake

After performing an upgrade I have an strange behaviour in guake. Sometimes the guake console appears in the middle of the screen, and sometimes appears in the top of the screen.

It seem that when I have a maximized windows or the clean desktop, the guake terminal appears in the top of the screen wich is the right position. When I have a restored windows, the guake terminal appears in the middle of the screen and fills to the bottom of the screen.

I attach an screenshot with the incorrect positon of the guake terminal.

Sorry for my poor english.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Wed Oct 21 18:23:54 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: guake 0.4.0-4
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=es_AR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: guake
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic x86_64

[carso (kingsocarso)]

Try to tinker with the preferences(right click on the tray icon and select preferences). Change the tab position or window size and behavior.

[Mariano (mariano-gurrieri)]

I tried to do so, but nothing works... I have reproduced the error in another computer with the sam results: after the las updates with update-manager, guake do the same in the two computers.

[Mariano (mariano-gurrieri)]

Solved!!!! Just removed guake "sudo apt-get remove --purge guake" and then reinstalled "sudo apt-get install guake"

[Jeff M. Hubbard (jeffmhubbard)]

I have been having this same problem for a couple of days now. It does not consistently appear at the bottom of the screen, just more often than not. I have tried uninstalling\reinstalling guake. I have also delete the settings from .gconf directory. None of this seemed to help.

I'm starting to think the problem isn't with guake at all. If I go to an empty desktop, and open one window (nautilus, terminal, etc) and place it towards the top of the screen, when I call guake, it appears at the bottom. If I move the window to the bottom of my screen and call gauke, it will appear at the top of the screen. If I do this same test on a cluttered desktop, guake consistently appears where there is the least amount of clutter.

This leads me to believe this is a matter of window placement, which is going to be handled by the window manager. If I disable compiz, guake always displays at the top of the screen. If I enable compiz, it goes back to the undesirable behavior. I have yet to find the right setting or window matching string to stop this, but I'm pretty sure compiz is the real culprit.

[Mariano (mariano-gurrieri)]

I have to admit that the problem persist.

When I reboot, the problem still persist.

[Mariano (mariano-gurrieri)]

I agree that the problem is compiz. I made the same test that jeff did, and the same is happening to me.

[Jeff M. Hubbard (jeffmhubbard)]

Mariano, as a quick fix, you can create a rule in CCSM. Go to Place plugin, then on the Fixed Window Placement tab, in the first section "Windows with fixed positions" create a rule. I matched it with class=Guake.py and set X and Y positions to 0 and checked "keep in workarea".

You can also set this manually in gconf-editor if you don't use CCSM. Set the following options:
/apps/compiz/plugins/place/screen0/options/position_matches
/apps/compiz/plugins/place/screen0/options/position_x_values
/apps/compiz/plugins/place/screen0/options/position_y_values
/apps/compiz/plugins/place/screen0/options/position_constrain_workarea

[Mariano (mariano-gurrieri)]

Thanks Jeff ;-) works like a charm..... great solution. Sorry for my english.

[Michael Düll (akurei)]

Solution works for me, too.

[rvdavid (rvdavid)]

Thanks Jeff Hubbard, works perfectly - it's more a workaround, than a solution though - but yeah would be great if we could have it fixed. I don't know much about compiz / guake programming etc, but your hint regarding this could be related to window placement seems viable.

I've observed the same as well.

[AndyOsi (andres-osinski)]

Confirmed this affects me in the latest 9.10 RC. Might this have something to do with Guake's WM interaction?

[mac.ryan (macryan)]

Confirm:
1. Bug affects Karmic RC
2. Workaround suggested by Jeff in #8 works

For those that - like me - took a moment to get what "CCSM" means, the answer is "CompizConfig Setting Manager" available in the standard repos and appearing in the System/Preferences hierarchies.

[Display Name (display-name-deactivatedaccount)]

Confirmed with 9.10 final, trying the workaround now.
I used this karmic package in Jaunty and never encountered the issue there.

[Silberwoelfin (sandra-hesse)]

I'm using Karmic Koala since last night and experiencing the same problem. Only, Jeffs solution won't work. Tried it several times using gconf with various settings, but guake won't appear in the top of the screen. Only the popup at startup saying, guake is ready, appears there. (Which is not, what I wanted.)

[Glauco (glauco-hass)]

I confirm this bug, but no sure if it is a Guake or Compiz issue. The workaround of "Windows Placement" plugin in CCSM worked for me.

[AndyOsi (andres-osinski)]

I've had this happen on both computers I've installed this. Honestly this makes Guake unusable for the time being. What was the version of guake that ran on Jaunty? I could try to see if the same problem occurs to rule out Guake.

[AndyOsi (andres-osinski)]

Disabling compiz fixes the problem. This is definitely a compiz layout issue.

[Michael Düll (akurei)]

I did not experience this with Guake 0.4.0 (compiled by myself) on Jaunty with Compiz enabled. Could be a compiz problem of karmic.

[Matías (matiasnfrias)]

Same happened to me. Ubuntu 9.10, with compiz. Solved with Jeff Hubbard suggestion. I think this is a confirmed bug. I'm using version 0.4.0, from karmic repos.

[nicolas kleinklaus (nknico)]

Same problem here. Work around proposed by Jeff Hubbard work perfectly.

[Felix Zweig (f.zweig)]

Thanks for the workaround. However, it also affects Guake's preferences dialog, which is placed at the top left corner, too. Any ideas about that?
Thanks!

[William Friesen (william-friesen)]

I have further edited my settings in Compiz Place Windows plugin, so that the preferences dialog is not affected. The "positioned windows" line now reads
(class=Guake.py) & !(title=Guake Preferences)
This will position the Guake terminal window at the top, while leaving the preferences window in the centre

[Sylvestre Ledru (sylvestre)]

Should this bug reassigned to compiz?

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

The upstream bug report does have a patch attached that supposedly fixes this issue, but upstream marked the bug as Invalid since you can mitigate this bug's symptoms by adding an exception somewhere in the Compiz settings. I don't think that it would be good to include something that changes the settings for Compiz to make Guake work in either the package of Compiz or of Guake. It would be best to find some fix for it.

I'm not sure whether this is Compiz' fault though. It could be that the nicest solution would be the addition of an extra window class to Compiz that doesn't get malplaced, but maybe we can make do with a change in Guake's code.

[deleted1234 (empty1234-deactivatedaccount)]

I've just noticed that having sticky notes active on the desktop will cause Guake to act irregularly (as described above). Redocking the sticky notes solves the issue. The sticky note applet is like an on/off switch for this bug. (This is only the case with compiz enabled). With Compiz disabled, Guake will behave as expected with or without sticky notes on the desktop. Hope this observation can shed light on the situation. It is a rather erratic bug.

[deleted1234 (empty1234-deactivatedaccount)]

I've uploaded a video demonstrating the behaviour in a more intuitive way

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEImb3gbNuA

[Zealotous (zealotous)]

Jeff's advice works for me.

[Robert Matusewicz (matekm)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner. There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test it on a currently supported Ubuntu version. When you test it and it is still an issue, kindly upload the updated logs by running only once:
apport-collect 457654