update-manager window expands off-screen (which effectively stops distribution upgrade)

[Nick Dowell]

Attempted to update to Ubuntu 19.10 using:
update-manager -d

Update-manager asks "Do you want to start the upgrade?" and summarizes packages to be removed/downloaded.

Clicking to show the details expands the window beyond the size of my screen (1280x800) so that I can't access the "Start Upgrade" button, effectively stopping the upgrade.

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

Have seen this behaviour previously.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, can't you just toggle back the details off again?

[arQon (pf.arqon)]

No, you can't. The window EXPANDS to where it's unusable, but then doesn't resize back DOWN when you toggle details back off.

The only way out is to kill update-manager (which doesn't even have a Close icon, so you also have to know that you can do it from the main menu, which some distros are now disabling by default, so then you're looking at the terminal for it. :P)

[arQon (pf.arqon)]

I wonder what the thought process was that led to disabling user resize of this window in the first place. As with the absence of the other window controls there's no reason for it at all, and simply not doing so would have prevented this bug from being application-breaking.

[arQon (pf.arqon)]

Just happened with 21.04 (on a pi4), albeit with a minor variation: this time, the suggestion was "change the home directory of user irc?" (the pi was a server install originally, with the desktop packages added later).
When I clicked "Help" it resized the window to fill the desktop, and I can JUST see what I'm guessing is the top of a "Close" button at the very bottom of the screen.

Once again, the window CANNOT be moved, and CANNOT be resized vertically (although it CAN be resized horizontally). IDK what toolkit the installer is using and how it manages to apparently default to being this broken, but the fix is the same as it was 18 months ago: if the layout is going to keep breaking like this - and empirically, it obviously is - then we need to stop disabling basic functionality like resize so the user can at least work around it!

Cheers.

[Norbert (nrbrtx)]

I can confirm this. Only Marco window manager normally reacts on <Atl>+mousemove to access the interface buttons.
For GNOME a workaround is to change screen resolution to higher. I have tested this only on VM, not sure about real hardware.