metacity crashes on login - no window manager

[Rainer Rohde]

Binary package hint: metacity

After this morning's (Apr 09, 2010) Lucid update, metacity seems to crash on login and as a result no window manager is displayed. I was able to get it back by going into System > Preferences > Appearance and changing the Visual Effects to "Normal", however, upon clicking on "Keep Settings" the Preference application hangs.

metacity:
  Installed: 1:2.30.0-0ubuntu1
  Candidate: 1:2.30.0-0ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 1:2.30.0-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Description: Ubuntu lucid (development branch)
Release: 10.04

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
Package: metacity 1:2.30.0-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-19.28-generic 2.6.32.10+drm33.1
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-19-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: wl nvidia
Architecture: amd64
Date: Fri Apr 9 11:42:17 2010
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release amd64 (20091027)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.utf8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: metacity

[Gerwulf (gerwulf)]

Similar problem here: I can get back my window decorations etc. by starting metacity in a terminal, but if I try to enable the visual effects (from 'none' to 'normal'), metacity asks me if I want to keep the settings, but then hangs itself. If I close the dialog window, I get this output in the terminal window:

**
metacity:ERROR:core/prefs.c:2714:meta_prefs_get_window_binding: code should not be reached
Aborted (Speicherabzug geschrieben)

I'm using the fglrx proprietary driver on a Mobility Radeon HD3400. Visual effects used to work yesterday, after I upgraded to Lucid from Karmic.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, your crash report is either missing or challenging to deal with as a ".crash" file. Please follow these instructions to have apport report a new bug about your crash that can be dealt with by the automatic retracer.

If you are running the Ubuntu Stable Release you might need to enable apport in /etc/default/apport and restart.

If you are using Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop environment - launch nautilus and navigate to your /var/crash directory and double click on the crash report you wish to submit.
If you are using Kubuntu or Xubuntu you can file the crash using /usr/share/apport/apport-qt --crash-file=/var/crash/_my_crash_report.crash in a terminal - where _my_crash_report.crash is the crash you would like to report.

I'm closing this bug report since the process outlined above will automatically open a new bug report which can then dealt with more efficiently. Thanks in advance for your cooperation and understanding.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package metacity - 1:2.30.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
metacity (1:2.30.1-0ubuntu1) lucid; urgency=low

  * New upsteam release:
    - Fix crash when right-clicking on window frame (Edward)
      (LP: #559368, #559111, #559004, #558893)
  * debian/patches/90_autotools.patch:
    - refreshed
 -- Didier Roche <email address hidden> Fri, 09 Apr 2010 20:26:31 +0200

[Gerwulf (gerwulf)]

I'm sorry, but apport tells me it doesn't support this crash file. I'm appending it to this post. All I did this time was right-clicking in the title bar, which crashed metacity and generated this crash file.

HTH,
Gerwulf

[Gerwulf (gerwulf)]

I'm reopening this bug, since the fix mentioned doesn't seem to work, at least in my case - I was using the latest metacity version (listed in the Janitor post) and still it got this crash. Please tell me if I'm doing this wrong and better had opened a new bug.

[Rainer Rohde (rainer-rohde)]

For me the problem went away after I reinstalled "gnome-desktop environment" and "ubuntu-desktop"; initially, metacity was complaining about a file inside $HOME/.config/metacity/, which wasn't there to begin with.

[pikkub (pikkub)]

The fix in post #7 worked for me as well. However, it seemed to change my grub background to a debian one. Reinstalling ubuntu-desktop and gnome-desktop-environment installed some key gnome and compiz components that had been removed for some reason.

[Gerwulf (gerwulf)]

I reinstalled "ubuntu-desktop" to no avail. "gnome-desktop-environment" isn't installed at all on my system, according to synaptic. If I select it to be installed, synaptic lists a large number of packages it additionally needs, some of which look quite redundant to what I think I have currently running, so I refrained from installing them.

I realized I was not really using the latest metacity version during my post #6 (as you can see in the appended crash file to #5), and the crash during right-clicking in the title bar is gone now. Nonetheless, I still have to start metacity manually after login to get my window decorations. I don't see any .crash file in /var/crash, though. I'm appending my ~/.xsession-errors to this post, in case this helps. Where can I find more information about metacity starting up, to hunt down this bug? I did not find any "metacity" entries in /var/log/messages or /var/log/Xorg.0.log, for example.

[Märt Suga (mart-suga)]

I found out that the problem is with this file: ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/session/required_components/%gconf.xml
Mine looks like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<gconf>
 <entry name="windowmanager" mtime="1270886575" type="string">
  <stringvalue>compiz</stringvalue>
 </entry>
</gconf>

Well, deleting this file should be safe so it should fix the problem.

[Märt Suga (mart-suga)]

If the previous suggestion does not work just delete the whole ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/session/ directory

[Martin Karlsson (foh1981)]

Comments #10 and #11 does fix the problem, ie it reverts back to metacity. However, if I try to activate Visual effects through Appearance, it hangs on Keep settings and upon log in the problem is back. Launching gnome-appearance-properties from a terminal gives the following output when changing from None to Normal under Visual effects:

martin@martin-desktop:~$ gnome-appearance-properties
There is not a graphics driver available for your system which supports the composite extension, or the current driver already supports it.

Couldn't find a perfect decorator match; trying all decorators
Found no decorator to start
---
I then launched Synaptics and discovered that the package compiz and compiz-gnome wasn't installed. I installed them and tried the above again, and the last two messages isn't displayed anymore. It still hangs on Keep settings dialog, but upon logging out and logging in Compiz seems to be working. The Visual effects are left in Normal and not changed back to None as was the case before.

[Martin Karlsson (foh1981)]

Oh, forgot this: In other words, the problem should go away if users install compiz and compiz-gnome package (which is a dependency to compiz so just mark that one for installation).

The bug report should probably be changed to another package, right? I'm assuming that the fault lies in either gnome-appearence-properties for not installing the right compiz packages, or the compiz packages not being installed from the first place, or the Gnome desktop for not being able to fall back on metacity. Metacity seems to have nothing to do with it, since it's compiz that's not starting.

[Märt Suga (mart-suga)]

Well, I found out that my suggestion does not work correctly. After restart the problem still occurs.

[Martin Karlsson (foh1981)]

Is the file re-created as it was before? Could it possible be because of the settings in Visual effects? It Visual effects is set to none, I'm assuming the content of the file should be metacity and not compiz.

[Märt Suga (mart-suga)]

Yes, the file is recreated with "compiz" even when visual effects are not active. However visual effect changes cannot be changed due to this bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-control-center/+bug/554106
I think these bugs have the same reason.

[Martin Karlsson (foh1981)]

Seems likely. Bug #554106 is probably the reason why you can't change back to metacity in Visual effects, and possibly why some (like me) didn't have the compiz package installed in the first place. I'm assuming here that Visual effects takes care of installing the compiz packages and that the deadlock prevents the packages from being installed. But if not then I'm clueless to as why I didn't have the packages installed.

I'm not sure if Visual effects comes preactivated in my case or not. I'm using Intel graphics, GMA4xxx something.

[dirkbo (dirkbo)]

I had the Problem after upgrading from karmic to lucid rc yesterday, deleting ~/.gconf/desktop/gnome/session/ solved it.

[dirkbo (dirkbo)]

Edit: Metacity still doesn't show window decorators, but at least on session startup compiz starts.

[kadri (kadri)]

I had same problem.

before I delete .gconf, .gconfd, .metactiy etc.. but problem also continue.
I create a new user account and try in it. everything seems ok. then I delete my old saved themes under ~/.theme and ~/.config then the problem solved.

It takes my hours but I solve it. Also I have to reconfigure my old gnome settings.