Can not move icons on the desktop through a VNC session

[bsh]

Binary package hint: xfdesktop4

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 32bit with Gnome, but XFCE environment is also installed and it's the main environment I use.
The machine is remote, so I use it via VNC with resumable sessions.
The desktop icons (Home, Filesystem, Devices, Floppy, etc.) are unmovable via a VNC session. Sometimes when I turn on an external USB device, it's icon appears in the middle of the pack, changing position of other icons. Once the device is turned off, the icons stay shifted down. (But this is another "bug") After such an event, I cann ot put the icons back to their usual place.
(But this isn't caused by the USB device. The icons are unmovable in general, regardless of the USB thing, that was just an example.)
The icon gets highlighted, the "hand" cursor appears, the icon moves when dragging it, but the usual rectangular position marker (where it can be dropped) doesn't appear. After releasing the mouse button, the icon flies back to its position.
When logging in physically, to the same environment, the icons are moveable.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner.

This might be a limitation of Xfce4.6. Do you have any type of compositor running on either desktop? If either the xfwm4 compositor and compiz are not running, this is expected behavior.

[bsh (bsh)]

Thanks for the reply!
Yes, xfwm compositing is enabled on :0, but not on the VNC display. as vnc4server doesn't support glx.
Gonna try to disable compositing tomorrow and report back.
Sad to hear this is a limitation, as this wasn't an issue with any of the previous versions. (I'm also wondering, what's compositor on :0 got to do with movability of icons on a virtual display...)

[bsh (bsh)]

Ok, so I logged in locally, turned off compositing, logged off, then logged in via VNC, but the icons are still unmovable.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

From the launchpad bug report:

I'm running Ubuntu 10.04 32bit with Gnome, but XFCE environment is also installed and it's the main environment I use.
The machine is remote, so I use it via VNC with resumable sessions.
The desktop icons (Home, Filesystem, Devices, Floppy, etc.) are unmovable via a VNC session. Sometimes when I turn on an external USB device, it's icon appears in the middle of the pack, changing position of other icons. Once the device is turned off, the icons stay shifted down. (But this is another "bug") After such an event, I cann ot put the icons back to their usual place.
(But this isn't caused by the USB device. The icons are unmovable in general, regardless of the USB thing, that was just an example.)
The icon gets highlighted, the "hand" cursor appears, the icon moves when dragging it, but the usual rectangular position marker (where it can be dropped) doesn't appear. After releasing the mouse button, the icon flies back to its position.
When logging in physically, to the same environment, the icons are moveable.

xfwm compositing is enabled on :0, but not on the VNC display. as vnc4server doesn't support glx.

I logged in locally, turned off compositing, logged off, then logged in via VNC, but the icons are still unmovable.

[Charlie Kravetz (cjkgeek)]

Thanks for reporting this bug and any supporting documentation. Since this bug has enough information provided for a developer to begin work, I'm going to mark it as confirmed and let them handle it from here.

This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments at: http://bugzilla.xfce.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7089

Thanks for taking the time to make Ubuntu better!

[Thaddaeus Tintenfisch (thad-fisch-deactivatedaccount)]

Is this problem still reproducible in currently supported Ubuntu releases?

[Thaddaeus Tintenfisch (thad-fisch-deactivatedaccount)]

Closing this report.

[Thaddaeus Tintenfisch (thad-fisch-deactivatedaccount)]

Please reopen this report if the bug is still reproducible. Thanks.