Super-imposed desktop icons of mounted partitions

[Arvind S Raj]

I am using Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala. I am unsure of which package the problem belongs to.

The problem I'm having is that of overlapping desktop icons. Suppose I mount a partition(say 32GB filesystem of the screenshot) of my hard disk(by clicking on Places -> partition_name), it gets mounted and a windows is displayed by nautilus as well as a desktop icon is displayed(say on the top left corner of the desktop). Now, if I unmount the above mounted partition(the 32GB filesystem by right clicking the icon and clicking on unmount) and mount another partition(say the Songs, Videos and Wallpapers of the screenshot) of my hard disk, the icon is displayed in the same place: the top left corner of the desktop. The problem arises when both the partitions that I have just mounted need to be mounted at the same time: the desktop icons of the two partitions super-impose. I have attached a screenshot showing what happens when both the partitions are mounted at the same time.

I know this can be solved by either dragging the icons to a desired position or even to right click and clean up by name. But, when newer icons are displayed on the desktop: say when a file is saved on the desktop or when some file is moved to the desktop, they manage to find an empty spot to be displayed. Couldn't something similar be done when mounting hard drives: displaying them in an empty space on the desktop?

I checked out the bug https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/40872 but it didn't quite match. In the bug mentioned above, the desktop icons just overlap partially. In this, the two icons are completely super-imposed.

[Arvind S Raj (arvindsraj-deactivatedaccount)]

Also I just discovered, suppose one of the overlapped icons is selected, then it's not possible to navigate to and highlight any other icon on the desktop using the arrow keys up, down, left and right: the selection highligh keeps looping among the overlapped icons.
And yes, more that two partitions icons can overlap; then, only the top two icons can be selected and highlighted: the other icon(s) is/are simply "non-existent": they are present on the desktop but cannot be selected by navigation keys due to the above stated looping among the top two icons and also cannot be selected by the mouse click since the top two icons effectively hide the ones below them.

[itsjustarumour (itsjustarumour-gmail-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

I'm also seeing this same behaviour on both of my Karmic machines (both 32-bit fresh installs, one an NVidia-based desktop and the other an Intel-based laptop).

I can replicate this on roughly 50% of reboots. I've been using Ubuntu on this same Desktop since Dapper 6.06 and never seen this problem before, so I consider it to be a "regression".

At other times - and this might be caused by the same bug - the icons don't overlap, but instead are spaced incorrectly. I can fix htis this by simply right-clicking on the desktop and selecting "Clean up by name", but it is an annoyance (see attached screenshot below).

[itsjustarumour (itsjustarumour-gmail-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Also, heres a screenshot of my overlapping icons. In this instance, I had plugged in my Vodafone Huawei E172 USB 3G modem (represented by the red and white icon). As you can see, rather than appearing below the first four icons, it appears on top of one of the folder icons.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Thank you for your bug report. This bug has already been reported, but please feel free to report any other bugs you find.

[itsjustarumour (itsjustarumour-gmail-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

Still getting problems with this.

I'm also getting similar problems in the Lucid 10.04 alpha 2, which is worrying.

What happens:

For example, take a look at this latest screenshot.
I have 5 random icons on my Desktop. I right-mouse-click and select "Clean Up By Name" - so that the 5 icons are lined up correctly and tidily.
I then create a new .txt file and save it to my Desktop.
As you can see from the screenshot, the icon for the new .txt file doesn't appear below the other icons - instead it appears on top of the 4th icon down.

What should happen:

The new icon should appear below the other icons.

[Bruno Girin (brunogirin)]

@Chris: do you know under what bug number this problem had already been reported so that we can mark it as a duplicate please?

[Bruno Girin (brunogirin)]

@Arvind: this is a duplicate of bug 364001 which is itself a duplicate of bug 40872 so I marked it as a duplicate of 40872. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.