settings set back to default from time-to-time

[Max Waterman]

I use the tweak tool to set :

Window Manager/Additional/
Auto-raise -> OFF
Focus mode -> Mouse

and I also manually do (always *after* the above) :

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences raise-on-click false

However, from time-to-time, these seem to get reset back to their defaults. I've not been able to figure out what is causing this. My first suspiciouns were that it was to do with rebooting, but a test reboot didn't cause the settings to change. My second was that it was do to with taking the laptop off it's dock and the associated switch from dual-monitor to single-monitor display config, but I just manually tested that too, and it also didn't cause any reset.

So, I'm not sure why this is happening at all. If there are any suggestions, I'm happy to try them out.

It seems to happen once every couple of days or so - but I don't record this so it's just a guess.

DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 13.04"

[J Phani Mahesh (phanimahesh)]

Seems strange. May be a related issue is the hotcorners getting reset after every restart.

If after setting the preferences from Unity Tweak Tool, gsettings shows the updated values, and still the values reset, the bug must be with gsettings itself. Can you verify this?

gsettings get org.gnome.wm.preferences auto-raise
gsettings get org.gnome.wm.preferences focus-mode ( 0-click, 1-sloppy,2-mouse)

Should show you the settings for Auto raise and focus mode respectively.

Awaiting reply, hence setting status at incomplete

[Max Waterman (davidmaxwaterman+launchpad)]

Sorry, those commands don't work for me. Can you make sure they work for you then paste them back? ...else I'm just guessing. For example - hrm, perhaps I got them in the end, but more accurate instructions would be nice :

[~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences auto-raise
false
[~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-mode
'mouse'

I have noticed they don't seem to change anywhere near as often as when I filed this bug report. In fact, I can't remember when I last had to set them - it must be weeks. Perhaps I've subconciously learned to avoid doing something that tickles the problem.

[J Phani Mahesh (phanimahesh)]

Apologies. I should've copy-pasted them. Missed the .desktop while typing from memory.

Without a reliable way of reproducing the bug, I can not test if something fixes it. In case this is no longer an issue, I guess this can be marked not a bug since the cause was never found.

In case you notice this happening again, or see that some specific action causes this issue, please re-open this bug or create a new one.

[Christopher Barrington-Leigh (cpbl)]

Since I modified unity a bit by means of ccsm, things have worked fine until a couple of updates ago (when I noticed two tweak tool updates in a row). Now when I reboot the focus setting is reset to click-to-focus, when I want sloppy focus-follows-mouse. I have to use ccsm to change it back each time.
IS this the same? I'm not sure whether this is a tweak tool or a ccsm problem.

[Christopher Barrington-Leigh (cpbl)]

I've just noticed that the original date of this bug predates the onset of my problem. I can resubmit... (?)

[Max Waterman (davidmaxwaterman+launchpad)]

I had this happen again today. I had to set the 'focus mode' back to 'mouse' and the 'auto-raise' to 'off'. They were :

[~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences auto-raise
true
[~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-mode
'click'

and afterward setting them back again :

[~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences auto-raise
false
[~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-mode
'mouse'

As it happens, I also had to reset :

[~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences raise-on-click
true
[~]$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences raise-on-click false
[~]$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences raise-on-click
false

Max.

[J Phani Mahesh (phanimahesh)]

Hello Max,

Did the settings reset after reboot or some event you can recall? Did you open Unity Tweak Tool before this happened?

If we can not connect UTT to this seemingly random resetting and identify the cause, it would be difficult to proceed from here.

[Max Waterman (davidmaxwaterman+launchpad)]

I often reboot overnight, so quite likely that happened - though it's not rare so it can't be *just* that.

I'm fairly sure I didn't use the Tweak tool before it happened.

Yes, I understand this is difficult to debug, but I think there's value in keeping track of it here.

I wonder when the tweak tool was most recently updated, or perhaps something to do with some other package/tool that gets updated.

[J Phani Mahesh (phanimahesh)]

> I'm fairly sure I didn't use the Tweak tool before it happened.

I was initially afraid it was related to the reset that might occur
while selecting theme tab. In case UTT hadn't been opened, it is unrelated.

> Yes, I understand this is difficult to debug, but I think there's value
> in keeping track of it here.

Yup that. This bug will expire if there's no activity for 60 days, but
if anyone finds something that can help, it stays and gets fixed when
there's enough information to reliably test it.

> I wonder when the tweak tool was most recently updated, or perhaps
> something to do with some other package/tool that gets updated.

Unity tweak tool has no hooks that run during installation/upgrade,
hence it is out of question. Other tools, theoretically it is possible
that they have some hook that messes up stuff, but it is unlikely.

I'm waiting for more data on this.

 status incomplete

[Max Waterman (davidmaxwaterman+launchpad)]

One clue, maybe; when I attempt to debug the window placement problem described in this bug :

<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/compiz/+bug/874146>

I notice that when I install and use ccsm to set the window placement to the monitor that has the pointer on it, I find that the settings I made (ie auto-raise, focus-mode, and raise-on-click) using the tweak tool and from gsettings, get set back to the defaults.

I did have to install ccsm, so I don't think that tool is the problem specifically, but I'm hoping it's a data point of some kind.

[Max Waterman (davidmaxwaterman+launchpad)]

happened again this morning :

$ for setting in raise-on-click auto-raise focus-mode; do cmd="gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences $setting"; echo $cmd; $cmd; done
gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences raise-on-click
true
gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences auto-raise
true
gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-mode
'click'

I've just made a shell script to make it easier to set them back to how I want them... :/

[Christopher Barrington-Leigh (cpbl)]

This bug went away for a while.

I noticed that there were two updates for unity-tweak-tool under 13.04 over the last 3 or so days.
And today the bug is back. When I reboot, my focus behaviour gets reset and I have to return it to sloppy and turn off auto-raise.

[J Phani Mahesh (phanimahesh)]

Hi Christopher,

Do you use a multi monitor configuration?

I have a strong feeling this is a compiz bug, but have no evidence to back it up. If we can find reliable way to make it happen, the compiz team can be asked for help.

Max,

Anything that works, to make life easy. :) Drop the script in the autostart folder or add it to startup applications to make it easy for now.

[Max Waterman (davidmaxwaterman+launchpad)]

FWIW, *I* do run multi-monitor, sometimes - but not always. I did wonder if it was switching between the two setups that messed it up, but I've not been able to nail it down.

re the script...right, at the moment, I just have :

gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences raise-on-click false
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences auto-raise false
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-mode 'mouse'

though I also print out the values before and after, so I can see what they were and that they've changed correctly. I didn't know about the autostart folder...I'll give it a try. Thanks.

[Barneedhar (barneedhar)]

Hmm, I can reproduce this bug. I set my Focus mode to Sloppy last
night and it's back to Click right now.

Quite impossible to be a Compiz issue but let me dig this bug a little more.
Thanks,
Barneedhar.

On Tue, Oct 8, 2013 at 5:49 PM, Max Waterman
<email address hidden> wrote:
> FWIW, *I* do run multi-monitor, sometimes - but not always. I did wonder
> if it was switching between the two setups that messed it up, but I've
> not been able to nail it down.
>
> re the script...right, at the moment, I just have :
>
> gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences raise-on-click false
> gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences auto-raise false
> gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences focus-mode 'mouse'
>
> though I also print out the values before and after, so I can see what
> they were and that they've changed correctly. I didn't know about the
> autostart folder...I'll give it a try. Thanks.
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are subscribed to Unity
> Tweak Tool.
> Matching subscriptions: unity-tweak-tool
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1194834
>
> Title:
> settings set back to default from time-to-time
>
> Status in Unity Tweak Tool:
> Incomplete
>
> Bug description:
> I use the tweak tool to set :
>
> Window Manager/Additional/
> Auto-raise -> OFF
> Focus mode -> Mouse
>
> and I also manually do (always *after* the above) :
>
> gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences raise-on-click false
>
> However, from time-to-time, these seem to get reset back to their
> defaults. I've not been able to figure out what is causing this. My
> first suspiciouns were that it was to do with rebooting, but a test
> reboot didn't cause the settings to change. My second was that it was
> do to with taking the laptop off it's dock and the associated switch
> from dual-monitor to single-monitor display config, but I just
> manually tested that too, and it also didn't cause any reset.
>
> So, I'm not sure why this is happening at all. If there are any
> suggestions, I'm happy to try them out.
>
> It seems to happen once every couple of days or so - but I don't
> record this so it's just a guess.
>
> DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 13.04"
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/unity-tweak-tool/+bug/1194834/+subscriptions

[J Phani Mahesh (phanimahesh)]

On Tuesday 08 October 2013 07:14:49 PM IST, Barneedhar wrote:
> Hmm, I can reproduce this bug. I set my Focus mode to Sloppy last
> night and it's back to Click right now.
>
> Quite impossible to be a Compiz issue but let me dig this bug a little more.
> Thanks,
> Barneedhar.

Great! isolate the cause so that we can atleast think of a workaround.
:)

P.S: was that supposed to be quite possible?

[Chad Skinner (chadskinner)]

Having a very repeatable issue like the described. I'm using 13.04 fully updated via apt-get update and upgrade (going to try this out of the box with no updates next)

When I make these changes
sudo gsettings set org.gnome.system.proxy.http enabled true
sudo gsettings set org.gnome.system.proxy mode manual
sudo gsettings set org.gnome.system.proxy.http host 'my.proxy.com'
sudo gsettings set org.gnome.system.proxy.http port 123

I can go into the network in control panel and verify that they are there but within seconds to minutes if you open it up, some of the entries will be missing, open it again and it's completely reverted back to original settings

I can do a "gsettings get" on these right after I make the change, it's fine, minutes later I do a get and everythings back to default values..... this is weird. I'll let you know if it doesn't happen before the updates.

[Chad Skinner (chadskinner)]

Installed 13.04 64bit with no updates, ran the settings above and in under a minute my settings had reverted back.

This is inside VMWare using the VMWare install process (which I will bypass next and try it on native hardware) but I doubt the VM could influence this kind of behavior.

[Chad Skinner (chadskinner)]

Some more notes: There are two instances of dconf-service running by default. I killed one of them and then my changes stayed for about 5 minutes until the second dconf-service started up again and then wiped out my changes. It appears these two services are fighting with each other. Going to see if I can figure out how to stop one of them from starting.

[Chad Skinner (chadskinner)]

I found a workaround to make the settings stick.

sudo killall dconf-service
run your gsettings commands

eventually a second instance of dconf-service starts up but it doesn't alter the settings I have changed. Very strange behavior.

[J Phani Mahesh (phanimahesh)]

Your diagnosis establishes that it is an issue with dconf. Dconf project manages bugs on Gnome Bugzilla. Can you report this bug upstream and link this thread for reference?

And since it has been established that the bug is not related to UTT codebase, I am marking this bug report status invalid. Once it has been fixed upstream, the issue should be resolved for UTT users as well, without any patch to the code.