icons disappear when screen resolution reduced

Bug #269208 reported by Cdr_RF
6
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
Nautilus
Confirmed
Unknown
nautilus (Ubuntu)
New
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

Ubuntu Intrepid Alpha5 using LiveCD - Some external HDD partition icons should not disappear from the Desktop when screen resolution is reduced

Ubuntu 8.10 intrepid-alpha-5, using LiveCD, Linux version 2.6.27-2-generic, GNOME Panel 2.23.91

How to reproduce:

Cold boot the Ibex Live CD to the Ubuntu Desktop on a computer with no installed version of Ubuntu. Attach an external five-partition (vfat) hard drive (HDD) via a ID 05e3:0702 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB 2.0 IDE Adapter to a USB port. Attach a USB flash drive to another USB port. System > Preferences > Monitor Resolution Settings: Dell 16", 1600x1200, 65Hz - bootup default for this Dell D1025HT. Icons for the six attached external USB media partitions appear in a column on the Desktop under the Install icon. These external drives all auto mount when they are attached.

Change the screen resolution to a more readable 800x600, 75Hz. Click Apply. Wait ~20 seconds, about 10 seconds with a black screen. Result: The bottom GNOME Panel moves to the very top of the screen on top of the top GNOME panel. At this point, only three and 1/2 icons for the HDD are visible on the desktop. Grab the Monitor Resolution Settings window and move it left to expose [X] > click [X] to close it.

Easy workaround: Click and hold down the mouse button on the bottom panel and move it back to the bottom of the screen where it was before the screen resolution was reduced after bootup.

The mouse can move the 50% visible icon further up on the Desktop to where it is fully visible. In other words, icons for the two partitions that were on the bottom of the column when the resolution was 1600x1200, are no longer visible on the Desktop. (If you do not attach the USB flash drive, there is only one missing icon.)

The missing icons can, however, be seen by Places > Removable Media > clicking any drive > Places > a person can right-click on any external drive partition under Places to unmount it.

If you go back to the 1600x1200 resolution, the icons that are missing from the 800x600 resolution are visible on the Desktop, but a first-time Live CD user may be too flummoxed to do this.

A crash report window did not appear on the Desktop. No ~/.xsession-errors file and no file in /var/crash.

I’m going to try to find the additional information that you need for this bug report from the following URLs, but it may take me 4 to 7 days to report back.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage#Find the program executable

In case the package with the bug is the X window system, if the instructions on the following URL are the same for people using a Live CD on a computer that does not have a version of Ubuntu installed on it, please state this in the instructions. (Maybe you state this, but it should be mentioned at the top.) LiveCD only users might become unhappy campers should they invest a lot of time in trying to follow the steps only to discover that the last step, for example, cannot be executed when using a Live CD.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DebuggingXAutoconfiguration

The Good News:
==============

The Genesys Logic IDE to USB2 adapter works fine, at least with a HDD, with alpha-5 per the expectations of one of the Ubuntu team members on a bug report. This fellow wanted feedback on the functionality or non-functionality of this adapter.

Thank you for looking into this.

The Bad News:
===========

Using an IDE to USB adapter to attach an external SMART-capable hard disk drive (HDD) to a computer prevents smartctl from reading the HDD's SMART data. The implication of this usage limitation - I don't imagine it can be called a bug - is that HDD temperature and other possibly important SMART measurements are not available to users. I also suspect that some other means of measuring HDDs' temperatures may also be thwarted when external HDDs are connected to computers via IDE to USB adapters.

How to reproduce this situation:

Boot the Intrepid Alpha5 Live CD on a computer that does not have a version of Ubuntu installed on it. Attach the external HDD. Use Synaptic to add smartmontools to the software that is in use on the computer.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sdc | more > SMART_30GB_cold.log

Unmount the HDD's (sdc) partitions. Shutdown Ubuntu and then power the computer off.

Quickly (if you are trying to discern whether the HDD may be running too warm when it is connected via the adapter): Attach the HDD to the computer's mainboard IDE socket on the end of an 80-wire IDE cable. Boot the computer using the Intrepid Alpha 5 LiveCD. Use Synaptic to add smartmontools to the software that is in use on the computer.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l {To determine that the test HDD is now sda, in my case}

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda | more > SMART_30GB_hot.log

The two log files are attached below.

The concern that I had was that the HDD that was connected by the IDE to USB adapter felt like it might be getting a little bit too warm near its IDE socket after it was connected for only about 30 minutes. After about an hour, I could feel that the warm temperature had spread over the top of the HDD. The HDD was mounted vertically with its IDE socket up. The HDD was cooled by natural convection with air available to the two broad sides of the HDD.

Suppose that one of the temperatures that SMART measures is inside the HDD. If the HDD's top surface temperature feels fairly warm, as was my case, it might be somewhat toasty inside the HDD. I estimate that the ambient air temperature was about 20 degrees C when I performed these tests. For both of the two above tests, the HDD was outside of the computer's case.

Adapter: ID 05e3:0702 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB 2.0 IDE Adapter

Hard Disk Drive (HDD): Maxtor 6E030L0 30GB IDE, jumpered per drawing on its top: DS (Master)

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Cdr_RF (g-ford9) wrote :
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Cdr_RF (g-ford9) wrote :
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Cdr_RF (g-ford9) wrote :
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Cdr_RF (g-ford9) wrote :
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Cdr_RF (g-ford9) wrote :
description: updated
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Cdr_RF (g-ford9) wrote :
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Andres Mujica (andres.mujica) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This bug did not have a package associated with it, which is important for ensuring that it gets looked at by the proper developers. You can learn more about finding the right package at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage . I have classified this bug as a bug in METACITY.
For future reference you might be interested to know that a lot of applications have bug reporting functionality built in to them. This can be accessed via the Report a Problem option in the Help menu for the application with which you are having an issue. You can learn more about this feature at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ReportingBugs.

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Andre Klapper (a9016009) wrote :

This is actually not a window-manager issue, but a desktop (nautilus) issue.

affects: metacity (Ubuntu) → nautilus (Ubuntu)
Changed in nautilus:
status: Unknown → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Luis Felipe Strano Moraes (luis-strano) wrote :
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