Launcher missing after desktop install

[Stefan Bader]

Release: Precise
Architecture: Amd64

Installing on a Dell 1521 laptop (ATI X1200 graphics) connected to an external screen works without visible problems (selecting install from the desktop cd). When logging into the installed system there is no launcher bar and the gnome terminal windows created are about half a text line in height (see screenshots). This affects the internal and the external display (mirrored mode).

Unity probably is only affected by some other bug. The problem does not exist when there is no external monitor connected. Also the problem did go away when selecting individual resolutions and content for both screen via the "Displays" dialogue. And strangely it also did not seem to re-appear when after this, I switched back into a mirrored mode.

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

Terminal window and Display dialogue opened.

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

This happened when, without changing the mirrored mode, I tried to select a different resolution.

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

Hitting escape in the hope of returning to the half-working state and trying to open the Display dialogue again. Good thing was that logout (and the top bars menus in general) did work and after logging in I was back in the initial state.

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

lspci|grep VGA
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] nee ATI RS690M [Radeon X1200 Series]

Hm, strange, not sure I noticed the "nee" part before...

[Colin Ian King (colin-king)]

Just to add, I'm seeing the same issue (no launcher on an external monitor in mirror mode) on two machines:

Dell Inspiron 1501 (AMD Turion 64 X2 Mobile Technology TL-50, ATI RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M] and also
Dell Inspiron 6400 (Intel Core 2 T5200), ATI M52 [Mobility Radeon X1300]

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thank you for your bug report, what video card and driver do you use? Is that specific to unity? do you get the same with unity-2d? could you add your .xsession-errors log to the bug?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

drop the "video card" bugs, those infos are already there, but do you use the ati open source of the fglrx driver? does it make a difference if you use the other one?

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

I am using the radeon open source driver and unity-2d does not have that problem. Adding my .xseesion-errors in a sec.

[Stefan Bader (smb)]

I cannot use the fglrx driver with this card. It is too old to be supported by it anymore (it used to be in older releases). I can try to repeat going through various resolution changes which did in the end produce a working mirrored mode as well. Just wanted to keep the system in this state in case there is some other information I should look at before doing so.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

ok, let's tentatively reassign to compiz but that could well be a driver issue

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Comment #9 shows compiz loading and Unity at least trying to load. Not sure if it crashed thereafter though.