GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 672325
Magnifier freezes shell when activities screen invoked
Last modified: 2021-07-05 14:18:32 UTC
In the current dev release of Gnome3 (3.3.90) on Arch Linux, the gnome-shell magnifier can crash/freeze the shell under certain circumstances. Backstory: I wrote a small script to increase/decrease the mag-factor setting for the shell magnifier (Using the python gsettings library. It works fine, I am using xbindkeys to call the script when the alt+mouse wheel is used. However, what I am finding is that if I change the zoom factor in and out many times (holding down alt + repeatedly scrolling my mouse), and then bring up the gnome-shell activities overlay the entire shell will freeze/crash and no key/mouse response is given. The only way to 'unfreeze' the shell is to return to the console and restart GDM. (on my Arch system, this involves doing a 'rc.d gdm stop', then logging back in). The issue seems to occur only after many repeated zoom changes are made. The system will appear completely stable until the activities overlay is invoked next. The same issue occurs with any root/top level window. I experienced the same problem when hiding/showing the Guake drop-down terminal as I did above with the activities overlay.
Created attachment 210027 [details] Magnifier zoom freeze test case
I should also say that originally, instead of using xbindkeys, I had written a script which uses python-Xlib to intercept the key combination then zoom. I experienced exactly the same bug and so thought I'd try using xbindkeys to work around it. I have added the original zooming script as an attachment. To run the script all you need to to is call the script and press alt+mouse_scroll.
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version, then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new ticket at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.