No window decorations using compiz fusion after creating new user

This problem has been resolved by installing the xserver-xgl package. However, if this is the normal solution, shouldn't this be installed as a dependency?

Here's some more information. Installing xserver-xgl is not a permanent solution. The window decorations disappear after switching users multiple times. Running gnome-compiz-preferences seems to restore them, but this is annoying.

Same thing happened to me, only I was doing an upgrade of Gutsy from Feisty and there was just the one user with sudo privileges.

Same thing for me. A fresh install of 7.10 and everything seemed to be running fine. However, seemingly randomly, window decorations will just disappear. The other compiz functions (e.g. the desktop cube) still work okay, just the decorations from my emerald theme are gone. Logging out and back in, or rebooting, fix the problem. Nothing obvious in dmesg.

???

Ironically, this was more stable in Feisty with a manually configured compiz. :(

Can someone provide me with tips how I can move this bug along? What other information is needed? I wouldn't want this bug showing up in hardy heron.

I have seen this bug too on a fresh gutsy install. I am using the nvidia-new driver on amd64. I believe what happens is, when a new window is drawn for someone that isn't the active session, it does not get the window decoration. My wife and I share a computer, and use the user switching applet to go back and forth between our sessions. Whenever one of us gets a message in pidgin while the other person is using the computer, when we switch back to our session, that message does not have window decorations.

I wanted to add this image of what is happening. I've seen other compiz issues where there are no window decorations period. For my issue, the window decorations are blank, if I click where the close and minimize buttons would be, they still function!

ilikeyoureyes, the screenshot is not the same issue I am experiencing. In my case, there are no window decorations at all (not even a blank border). I have done some more testing and it appears that the issue is not actually related to creating a new user as I originally thought but is actually triggered by changing resolutions.

I reinstalled to try and reproduce the scenario but I could not at first. Then I changed the resolution from 1280x1024 to 1024x768 and my window decorations disappeared. I now recall that I did this in my original install as well. I must have done it at some point that made it seem like adding the new user caused the problem.

Has anyone else changed the default resolution either before or after enabling visual effects?

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please add your ~/.xsession-errors, /var/log/Xorg.0.log and the output of lspci -vvnn to your bug report as separate attachments? Thanks in advance.

Pedro,

Thanks for getting back to me on this. I have since reverted back to Ubuntu 6.06 LTS. I will attempt to reproduce this bug when I upgrade to 8.04 LTS.

Hi Pedro,
I just had the same problem with the disappearing windows on a new installation of Ubuntu 7.10
I was able to resolve the problem by disabling and then re-enabling the restricted drivers for Nvidia.
After rebooting, the window borders were back.
The problem appeared after I changed the display resolution, but setting the it back to the original resolution didn't bring back the window borders.

Fresh HHa6 install. Enabled nvidia restricted module and restarted. upon restart "basic" desktop effects automatically selected for me behind the scenes (seems sane default to me). Unfortunate side effect was that all window decorations are missing. switching to "none" restores window decorations (via metacity im sure). investigating solution.

Please attach your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file, I suspect you set it up wrong.

I didnt actually "set it up". I'm very familiar with Xorg.conf files and dont mind editing them if need be but i was commenting on the bug in an effort not to fix *my problem* but the general problem that these users seem to have as well. I was under the impression that the users who said "yes" to the restricted drivers dialog should get to keep a working desktop. And that is what i was commenting on.

adding the xserver-xgl (and its deps) package and restarting X solved the problem for me. perhaps these should be dependencies if we are going to enable basis desktop effects by default? or is this solution masking some other symptom?

Tail of log:
Setting up libglitz1 (0.5.6-1) ...
Setting up libglitz-glx1 (0.5.6-1) ...
Setting up xserver-xgl (1:1.1.99.1~git20080115-0ubuntu1) ...

Happiness ensues.

Xgl is its own world of hurt and not a fix for this. It looks like jockey is not setting up the xorg.conf correctly. Try adding the following to the Screen section:

Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"

removed xserver-xgl (and deps), added option to screen section, forced X restart and tada, window borders in compiz. This was an option that i USED to have added manually, and one i though that was at least installed by nvidia-settings or nvidia-xconfig. neither did. so as the story goes my problem is fixed but i wasnt really worried about that in the first place. what can we do to prevent this from happening to my grandmother or my brother who cant and shouldnt be expected to edit conf files to get such luxuries as window decorations :).

Seems jockey is not adding this option when enabling the nvidia driver.

The AddARGBVisuals and AddARGBGLXVisuals options are set by default by jockey for the nvidia-glx-legacy driver, but not for the newer nvidia-glx and nvidia-glx-new, since they do not need it any more (at least for the other cases that I saw). However, this was already the case in Ubuntu 7.10. So what's still left from this bug?

@Martin: Understood except that i have installed the newer:

nvidia-glx 1:96.43.05+2.6 NVIDIA binary XFree86 4.x/X.Org driver

And DID require the addition of the Option to get window decorations. While im not a fan of throwing the kitchen sink at the problem, does its addition harm the cases where not required? If not then +1 on adding it here. I systematically removed the possibility of somethign else causing or fixing this problem.

@martin: I see the most recent jockey-common doesnt contain the necessary fix for this issue (addition of: Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true" for nvidia-glx at least.) What can i do to prove or confirm this issue for you?

Got the same problem:

Hardy Beta
GeForce 4 Ti4600

I have made no changes to any files, but I did setup another user account and enabled the restricted drivers. Only way I can get the Window decor back is to disable compiz.

Here is my xorg after enabling the nvidia driver

Can you please add the single line above to you xorg as i did to see if the situation resolves. Also please let us know which nvidia package is getting selected (nvidia-glx i assume).

-----Original Message-----
From: denzilla74 <email address hidden>
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2008 9:14 PM
To: <email address hidden>
Subject: [Bug 154596] Re: No window decorations using compiz fusion after creating new user

Got the same problem:

Hardy Beta
GeForce 4 Ti4600

I have made no changes to any files, but I did setup another user
account and enabled the restricted drivers. Only way I can get the
Window decor back is to disable compiz.

--
No window decorations using compiz fusion after creating new user
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/154596
You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
of the bug.

Can you post part of your xorg that has the line you want me to add to it so I can see how its supposed to look? I inserted it as requested, but it just made Ubuntu go into xorg failsafe mode which means I did it wrong. I'm a noob so please forgive the stupidity. Using nvidia-glx btw.

@denzilla: no problem, if you look at your xorg.conf file you should see a "Screen:" section. the line (Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true") goes inside of this screen section. I have posted my xorg.confas an attachment for you to look at. The key lines are the

The duplicate bug report that I made ( Bug 205432 ) was resolved using by adding the [ Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true" ] line into my xorg.conf file. Will jockey be updated to include this option?

@nanley: i surely hope so. You are at least the second person that the proposed solution has worked for.
@martin: is there anything we can do to get this into hardy before its too late? Would be a shame to break window decorations for so many people using the nvidia-glx package.

Confirmed adding "AddARGBGLXVisuals" to xorg fixed it for me as well. Little late, but oh well....

Adding the line - Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true" - into the screen section of xorg.conf works for me as well, using hardy-beta with a fresh install. Nvidia GeForce2 MX 32 MB using nvidia-glx package (installed using restricted drivers manager). Selecting "normal" under visual effects now works; after rebooting as requested when first clicking "normal". Previously I had to select "none" for visual effects to get the title bars to display. I mistakenly ran the "sudo dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg" command after inserting the option line but this seemed to put the xorg.conf file back to the previous setting without the option line.

I'll add it for nvidia-glx then, too, thanks for testing. I am using nvidia-glx-new here, and do not need that option, compiz works fine. Can anyone confirm?

I have a laptop that runs nvidia-glx-new but is still running 7.10. We added the line for it long ago i think but not sure if it is still needed. Will upgrade the machine tonight and test for you.

Fixed in trunk.

This bug was fixed in the package jockey - 0.3.3-0ubuntu1

---------------
jockey (0.3.3-0ubuntu1) hardy; urgency=low

  * New upstream bug fix release:
    - jockey/xorg_driver.py: Check if _row attribute is present, which is not
      the case for Subsections in the "Module" section. (LP: #201160)
    - Make --check-composite ask for confirmation. (LP: #202898)
    - Enable AddARGBGLXVisuals option for standard nvidia driver.
      (LP: #154596)
    - KDE: Do not change check boxes if enabling was cancelled.
    - KDE: Drop unicode() conversion in confirm_action(), strings are already
      unicode (LP: #206169)
    - KDE: Disable help button if help is not available. (LP #206169)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Thu, 27 Mar 2008 12:41:53 +0100

Jockey does now add the Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True" line to the xorg file for nvidia-glx but it adds it to the device section. Which until recently i though was ok. Unfortunately though i am unable to run compiz properly unless i move this line into my defined screen section. can anyone else confirm this bug by removing this line from their screen section and adding it to your device section only. this only need to be tested for nvidia-glx users.

meant to mention that EVERYTHING works properly if the option is added to the screen section and removed from the device section as i had previously hand configured.
@martin: is it possible to move this option declaration to that section instead of device?

The Option "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "True" line added to either the device only or screen only section seems to work for me. I only changed the xorg.conf file to test this after applying today's (31 Mar) updates. Nvidia-glx (GeForce 2 MX 32MB).

Fixed in bzr head.

This bug was fixed in the package jockey - 0.3.3-0ubuntu2

---------------
jockey (0.3.3-0ubuntu2) hardy; urgency=low

  * Merge to upstream trunk to pick up a few bug fixes:
    - nvidia.py: Add AddARGBGLXVisuals option to Screen section for
      nvidia-glx. (LP: #154596)
    - nvidia.py: Do not advertise as enabling composite if driver is already
      loaded (i. e. installed manually). (LP: #202802)
    - fglrx.py: Do not suggest installing fglrx if using the radeon X.org
      driver, since that already supports composite (LP: #207957)
    - jockey/ui.py: Change --update-db to print an error message instead of
      exception (LP: #209594)

 -- Martin Pitt <email address hidden> Tue, 01 Apr 2008 20:40:50 +0200

Confirmed adding "AddARGBGLXVisuals" to xorg fixed it for me as well.

However, I'm running the release level of Hardy, with the latest version of jockey,
and just recently (about a week ago) rebuilt the xorg.conf file (using some tool
I've already forgotten) -- I think it was "nvidia-config" or something like that.

The file generated by nvidia-config does not have these lines in them.