Notify OSD bubble sometimes appears as a single line of pixels

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄]

Ejected a USB stick, expected a notify OSD bubble, got a single black line of pixels. if I move the mouse near it, it fades in and out like a bubble should. Two screenshots attached, what it should look like and what happened.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.04
Package: notify-osd 0.9.33-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.2.0-19.30-generic-pae 3.2.11
Uname: Linux 3.2.0-19-generic-pae i686
ApportVersion: 1.94.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Mar 20 15:08:16 2012
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
GtkTheme: Ambiance
IconTheme: ubuntu-mono-dark
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS "Precise Pangolin" - Alpha i386 (20120211)
MachineType: TOSHIBA Portable PC
PccardctlIdent:
 Socket 0:
   no product info available
PccardctlStatus:
 Socket 0:
   no card
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 TERM=xterm
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcKernelCmdLine: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-19-generic-pae root=UUID=81d18af9-eccc-42b3-bb24-6d52ff4c787e ro quiet splash vt.handoff=7
RelatedPackageVersions:
 xserver-xorg 1:7.6+10ubuntu1
 libgl1-mesa-glx 8.0.1-0ubuntu5
 libdrm2 2.4.30-1ubuntu1
 xserver-xorg-video-intel 2:2.17.0-1ubuntu4
 xserver-xorg-video-ati 1:6.14.99~git20111219.aacbd629-0ubuntu2
SourcePackage: notify-osd
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
WindowManager: No value set for `/desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager'
dmi.bios.date: 05/22/2008
dmi.bios.vendor: TOSHIBA
dmi.bios.version: Version 3.80
dmi.board.name: Portable PC
dmi.board.vendor: TOSHIBA
dmi.board.version: Version A0
dmi.chassis.asset.tag: 0000000000
dmi.chassis.type: 10
dmi.chassis.vendor: TOSHIBA
dmi.chassis.version: Version 1.0
dmi.modalias: dmi:bvnTOSHIBA:bvrVersion3.80:bd05/22/2008:svnTOSHIBA:pnPortablePC:pvrVersion1.0:rvnTOSHIBA:rnPortablePC:rvrVersionA0:cvnTOSHIBA:ct10:cvrVersion1.0:
dmi.product.name: Portable PC
dmi.product.version: Version 1.0
dmi.sys.vendor: TOSHIBA
glxinfo: Error: [Errno 2] No such file or directory
setxkbmap:
 Error: command ['xkbcomp', ':0', '-w0', '-'] failed with exit code 1: Error: Cannot open display ":0"
                   Exiting

[Alan Pope 🍺🐧🐱 🦄 (popey)]

Repeatable, just got it ejecting a CD

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Andrea Corbellini (andrea.corbellini)]

This program is caused by programs that send notifications with a null summary.

I have fixed this bug in Geary and have done some research around this problem [1]:

> Giving a quick look to https://developer.gnome.org/notification-spec/ it
> seems that 'body' is optional and may not be supported by all notification
> servers (Table 1. Notification Components, Table 5. Server Capabilities).
> 'summary' seems to be required, although I couldn't find any explicit
> sentence saying so.

So the problem seems to be arised by applications that do not follow the specification. However it's worth noting that Notify-OSD could be smarter and show the body of the notification even if no summary has been set.

[1] http://redmine.yorba.org/issues/6894