[Gutsy] font size suddenly shrinks for each new window

[Gábor Bergmann]

Occasionally, newly opened windows start to have very tiny fonts. From that moment on, each newly started program will have small fonts that are very difficult to read. Previously running programs (i.e. windows that have been open since before the anomaly appeared) are uneffected.

Restarting X restores everything to normal.
Could not find a way to predictably reproduce the bug.
Could not spot any similar bugs on Launchpad.

Notable observations:
 * K menu, panel, taskbar etc. unaffected, since it has been running long before the anomaly occurred
 * the 'tiny' fonts appearing in various windows are not even the same size
 * the customly rendered document area of OpenOffice.Org is unaffected; menus etc. affected
 * new tabs in previously running akregator are NOT affected; new tabs of previously running firefox ARE affected
 * message body area of previously running Thunderbird IS affected, while menus, etc. are not
 * i'm writing this report in firefox, using ctrl+mousewheel to magnify document area fonts back to normal (menus are still illegible)
 * it IS possible to restore normal font sizes by manually setting them (e.g. in kcontrol) to size 14 or so (they appear to have been set to size 9)

Possible culprit: Totem (2.20), I recall running it every time the bug occurred, and I do not usually do that.

Using Ubuntu Gutsy, with kubuntu-desktop installed, running the KDE environment.
Logs, screenshot coming up.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Mon Jan 28 14:58:13 2008
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/totem
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
Package: totem-xine 2.20.0-0ubuntu3
PackageArchitecture: amd64
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/totem
ProcCwd: /home/zerobaba
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=/home/zerobaba/scripts:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: totem
Uname: Linux Babfej 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Dec 18 05:28:27 UTC 2007 x86_64 GNU/Linux

[Gábor Bergmann (zerobaba)]

Attaching a screenshot showing various windows together.
Akregator displays the correct font sizes.
Font sizes in firefox content area had to be manually increased to become readable.

[Gábor Bergmann (zerobaba)]

ddcprobe output
----------------------

vbe: VESA 3.0 detected.
oem: NVIDIA
vendor: NVIDIA Corporation
product: G73 Board - p456h7b Chip Rev
memory: 262144kb
mode: 640x400x256
mode: 640x480x256
mode: 800x600x16
mode: 800x600x256
mode: 1024x768x16
mode: 1024x768x256
mode: 1280x1024x16
mode: 1280x1024x256
mode: 320x200x64k
mode: 320x200x16m
mode: 640x480x64k
mode: 640x480x16m
mode: 800x600x64k
mode: 800x600x16m
mode: 1024x768x64k
mode: 1024x768x16m
mode: 1280x1024x64k
mode: 1280x1024x16m
edid:
edidfail

[Gábor Bergmann (zerobaba)]

finally verified: this bug seems to occur when I start totem, and only then.

[Gábor Bergmann (zerobaba)]

This thread reports a very similar bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/totem/+bug/135495
I'm not entirely sure, but my report may be a duplicate.
I'm using Kubuntu. totem starts gnome-settings-daemon for me, too, but killing that process does not solve the problem.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

seems to be a duplicate indeed