[gutsy] deskbar applet locks up with window switch plugin enabled

Bug #150559 reported by Glyph Lefkowitz
16
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
deskbar-applet (Ubuntu)
Invalid
Medium
Unassigned

Bug Description

When I first invoke the deskbar applet after I've logged in, I type a few characters and the window becomes unresponsive.

However, it's an odd kind of "unresponsive" because the window manager (both compiz and metacity) don't notice that it's dead, and don't offer me the option to force quit. Compiz does not desaturate it as it normally would for an application that's frozen.

If I kill the applet directly and then select "reload" when the panel asks me if I should reload the applet, it seems to work fine.

Running strace on the hung process wasn't too helpful; it just says it's blocked in a futex_wait. Even odder, if I strace it before I attempt to do anything with it, the bug does not occur, so it seems like a pretty twitchy race condition.

Revision history for this message
Pedro Villavicencio (pedro) wrote :

Thanks for your bug report. Please try to obtain a backtrace http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash and attach the file to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

Changed in deskbar-applet:
importance: Undecided → Medium
status: New → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Glyph Lefkowitz (glyph) wrote :

The program doesn't crash, and the behavior is not reproducible when running under strace - or gdb, for that matter. Is there any other debugging information that I can provide?

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matt nicholson (matthewnicholson) wrote :

This sounds just like my problem as well. its does "crash" but essentially hangs for 30 seconds to a few mintues, with each search. I've turned off the tracker live backend, and the programs backend (the two i would use most) and it still happens.

I'm more than willing to help figure this out, however, I am unsure how ot manually run deskbar, since it is an applet to get a backtrace./debug report etc.

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Christopher Armstrong (radix) wrote :

I had similar problems with the deskbar and they went away when I disabled the window switcher. Does the problem continue for you guys if you turn off the window switcher?

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Corey Burger (corey.burger) wrote :

Some quick testing. This error appears when you run Metacity as well but the difference is that Metacity is seeing it as a crash, unlike Compiz. I can replicate this about 1 in every 5 times (or so), simply by opening the window. However, strace, ltrace and gdb are giving me nothing.

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Corey Burger (corey.burger) wrote :

I can confirm that this is apparently caused by the Window Switcher plugin.

Changed in deskbar-applet:
status: Incomplete → Triaged
Revision history for this message
Michael Ellerman (michael-ellerman) wrote :

Nope, I see this _without_ the window switcher plugin enabled.

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Michael Ellerman (michael-ellerman) wrote :

For me the problem is solved if I disable the "Mail (Address Book)" plugin.

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nikos (nbogiatzoglou) wrote :

Disabling the "Mail (Address Book)" plugin solved the problem for me too.

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Marek (marek-kirejczyk) wrote :

For me problem occurs only when Window Switcher is at the top of loaded extensions.
It starts after deskbar-applet reload or X session reset.

Revision history for this message
Marek (marek-kirejczyk) wrote :

Disabling/enabling the "Mail (Address Book)" plugin makes no difference for me.

Revision history for this message
jlibster (jonahlibster) wrote :

I hope this helps someone: When I did a new Gutsy install and I'm not sure when it started but sometime after installing the Mythbuntu module, the deskbar-applet started raising errors upon logon asking if I wished to remove it. I have tried reinstalling it using the Synaptic manager to no avail. only after consenting to removing it AND deleting the panel and recreating it without adding the deskbar-applet was I able to get the error to cease. So far I cannot find a solution that allows the deskbar to resume. I hope this description will help the team debug thiserror and resolve it. In the meantime I will see if I can trace anything else so that I can add this applet again.

Revision history for this message
jlibster (jonahlibster) wrote :

Okay, this is strange: I installed the deskbar-applet-dbg to try to send some data concerning the errors it was generating upon adding to the panel but installing the dbg module (along with its dependencies) made the error disappear. Personally I hate bugs that "magically" go away. Does anyone have an explanation? Thanks all.

Revision history for this message
jlibster (jonahlibster) wrote :

Okay, wrong. it WAS working until I rebooted, then the error asking to delete the applet from the panel appeared and the applet became invisible. so much for that. (should have known). Will try to get some debugging info shortly

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

Could anybody attach gdb to deskbar when it's locked and get a backtrace? Do you have any error about it in .xsession-errors?

Changed in deskbar-applet:
status: Triaged → Incomplete
Revision history for this message
Andrew Starr-Bochicchio (andrewsomething) wrote :

It might also be helpful to see if this can be reproduced in Hardy. I can't seem to reproduce it here.

Revision history for this message
Sebastien Bacher (seb128) wrote :

As described in the previous comments, your report lacks the information we need to investigate the problem further. We'll close this report for now - please reopen it if you can give us the missing information.

Changed in deskbar-applet:
status: Incomplete → Invalid
Revision history for this message
Michael Ellerman (michael-ellerman) wrote :

For the record, I can't reproduce this in Hardy yet.

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