GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 625781
metacity crashes with more than 16 virtual desktops
Last modified: 2011-01-15 22:54:39 UTC
When using more than 16 virtual desktops, metacity crashes with error : metacity:ERROR:core/prefs.c:2482:meta_prefs_get_workspace_name: assertion failed: (workspace_names[i] != NULL) It seems to be because src/metacity.schemas.in.in only defines keys in /apps/metacity/workspace_names/ for desktop 1-16, increasing this to 36 (the maximum metacity lets you have) fixes the problem. It didn't used to do that even though the obvious related changes in src/metacity.schemas.in.in and in core/prefs.c dates back to 2002, so I don't know what caused this change. It happened to me after upgrading to mandriva 2010.1 and someone reported it for ubuntu : https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/metacity/+bug/583847 And before you ask, yes having more than 16 desktops is very useful. I use 24 desktops arranged in 3 columns with a really big workspace switcher, and no taskbar. It's IMHO the best way to manage a desktop, especially with a wide screen.
The other thing is, that when you change number of workspaces ... metacity works as expected, until restart ... then it refuses to start with no error or indication of any kind. You have to run "metacity --replace" from terminal to get error which is not quite obvious.
I can confirm this bug on Fedora 13 and Ubuntu 10.04. In my case the error was the one below. metacity:ERROR:core/prefs.c:2495:meta_prefs_get_workspace_name: assertion failed: (workspace_names[i] != NULL) Releases: metacity-2.30.1-0ubuntu1 metacity-2.30.0-3.fc13.x86_64
Confirmed. How annoying.
Created attachment 167041 [details] [review] Initialise all workspace names Well, I have no idea what changed (in fact, nothing changed as far as I can see, so why it should break is beyond me), but the attached patch fixes the crash. If anyone would like to look it over, I'd be grateful; I'll commit it in a day or so unless there are objections.
I can confirm that the patch resolves the issue for me on Fedora 13 x86_64 when added to metacity-2.30.0-3.fc13.x86_64.
you should probably update the schema definition too (as described in the link in first post)
Go go go! I get this bug too in openSUSE 11.3 and it is super-annoying.
*** Bug 626832 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
(In reply to comment #6) > you should probably update the schema definition too (as described in the link > in first post) Good point. Done. Committed to master now: http://git.gnome.org/browse/metacity/commit/?id=04d5891337bb09f64e51d4be5f5c48b2ea60c547 -> FIXED.