"Shut Down" dialog doesn't open in the foreground

I can confirm this.
Andrew, does pressing the power button get you the shutdown dialogue or the logout dialogue? I get the latter and it is annoying.

Bartek,

The power button bringing up the wrong dialog is noted in bug #252795 (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-power-manager/+bug/252795). Installing Ted's latest gnome-power-manager package in his PPA resolved that issue for me.

i can confirm it opens in the background SOMETIMES (not every time) when summoned by pressing the laptops power button.

in fact it seems to open on top, but it does not obtain focus

It seems that the dialogue only obtains focus the first time after starting the computer. After suspending or hibernating the computer, the dialogue will appear on top, but will for some reason not gain focus.

Confirming in current 9.04.

When I try to open the dialog and hibernate, it opens below other windows and doesn't have focus.

dunno if it's just my imagination, but I only noticed it once I started running compiz (i.e. set deskstop effects to max rather than none). Also on Jaunty.

i dont use compiz and have the problem as well

This has happened to me many times in Jaunty. I agree it's a great papercut to fix.

I can confirm this. I use compiz all the time and oddly enough this happens only once in a while. Also I get the correct dialog. (Is it possible that focus prevention prohibits it from displaying properly?)

This is working as intended originally, though perhaps the intention should change. What happens is that when you press the power button, if there has been keyboard or mouse activity recently, it opens in the background so you don't accidentally select one of the options. I'm not sure what the rationale is here exactly, perhaps that this dialog can be triggered automatically in some conditions, or that some power buttons are easily accidentally pressed, and so if you are in the middle of clicking or typing when this happens, you will shutdown/restart/etc unintentionally and perhaps lose data.

Perhaps it should not perform this check and always come to the front. This is almost definitely a dupe of an older bug in which the behavior has been explained but I can't find it at the moment.

Confirming what Michael said above ^

If I try to shut down my computer with either option, the dialog comes up and gains focus. The only instance in which this does not occur for me is when there is recent typing or mouse activity. I guess that I'd prefer to have the dialog gain focus regardless of the current state even at the risk of pressing a button accidentally.

From what I can see, the bug is not in gnome-power-manager, but in gnome-session.

I can see in original file gnome-session/gsm-logout-dialog.c at line 142:

        gtk_window_set_keep_above (GTK_WINDOW (logout_dialog), TRUE);

There is no logic surrounding it that could cause this window to be not kept above. Also, this file (gsm-logout-dialog.c) is affected by debian/patches/80_new_upstream_session_dialog.patch, but I don't see anything that could cause the bug.

I'm seeing this on Karmic, too. I'm annoyed by this behavior when I press CTRL+ALT+DEL to bring up the dialog. I understand the reasoning about preventing accidental shutdown if somebody inadvertently presses the power button, but I don't think the same reasoning should apply when the dialog is triggered by pressing a key combination. The code should differentiate between the two cases.

But frankly, is it really that common for people to inadvertently bring up the shutdown dialog? Is it so common as to motivate this continually annoying behavior?

Hey, I always thought that the shutdown dialog (which possibly should be called something else) should have an option to lock the screen, like in Windows XP. That option, which is non-destructive if selected by mistake, should be the default. In that way nobody would have to worry about the risk of dataloss.

People keep reporting that they notice this behavior...
But I have *never* noticed this.
I'v used the FUSA/indicator-session and the system menu for shutdowns/logouts and this doesnt happen with those.

Might this be a problem with triggering those actions using keyboard shortcuts?
 Can the people who have reported as noticing this behavior, comment on how they trigger the actions ?

FWIW , using the terminal is the best way ... just kidding ;)

Marking invalid /as a paper cut/, as this is not consistently reproducible (I cannot reproduce it, nor can mac_v), so it makes it difficult to fix. I also suspect that the sporadic nature of the problem means the technical details underneath the issue are non-trivial.

@david: it works properly the first time but fails every subsequent time. to reproduce the bug do:

1) press power button to show menu (opens in foreground, has focus)
2) select suspend
3) press power button to resume the computer
4) enter password to unlock screen
5) press power button to show menu (opens in foreground, but does not have focus)

you have to start with one iteration of suspend/resume to make it "work". this is reproducible every time on multiple machines for me. have you tested it this way?

This is on Lucid Lynx Alpha 1, running Gnome 2.29.3 under metacity.

How to reproduce:
1) Begin with a clean desktop.
2) Open an instance of Nautilus.
3) Press the power button.

Expected behavior: The shutdown dialog should come up in the foreground, active and ready to receive keyboard or mouse input.

Actual behavior: The shutdown dialog comes up inactivated (about 9 times out of 10), either in the foreground or in the background. For me, most of the time it comes up in the foreground, but occasionally it ends up obscured by other windows. If it is in the background it is never active.

For clarity, it doesn't matter whether I press the power button or press CTRL+ALT+DEL.

This bug has become confusing, so I have opened bug #510771, about the dialog coming up without being active.