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Bug 660832 - occasionally loses the ability to pass mouse events to windows
occasionally loses the ability to pass mouse events to windows
Status: RESOLVED OBSOLETE
Product: gnome-shell
Classification: Core
Component: general
3.2.x
Other Linux
: Normal normal
: ---
Assigned To: gnome-shell-maint
gnome-shell-maint
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
 
Reported: 2011-10-03 21:09 UTC by Bill Nottingham
Modified: 2021-07-05 14:22 UTC
See Also:
GNOME target: ---
GNOME version: ---



Description Bill Nottingham 2011-10-03 21:09:40 UTC
A couple of times a day, GNOME Shell stops passing mouse events to windows.

The symptoms will be that mouse movement and clicks do not select new windows, or select items/buttons/etc. in windows. There is no obvious trigger to reproduce this on demand.

Bouncing the shell via alt-f2/r fixes it.

gnome-shell-3.2.0-2.fc16.x86_64

Additional information:

- Using sloppy focus
- The biggest correlation I have seen with the occurence is when there is heavy I/O to my home directory such that some app will be frozen in sync() for a while. (firefox, gnome-terminal, whatever) But that may be coincidence.
Comment 1 Bill Nottingham 2011-10-03 21:10:06 UTC
This has happened throughout the 3.1.9x cycle, but didn't happen with 3.0.
Comment 2 Bill Nottingham 2011-10-06 17:23:18 UTC
Happened again today. Checked .xsession-errors, only recent message from gnome-shell was:

(gnome-shell:1527): Clutter-CRITICAL **: clutter_actor_queue_relayout: assertion
 `CLUTTER_IS_ACTOR (self)' failed

May or may not be relevant, of course.
Comment 3 Bill Nottingham 2011-10-06 18:16:44 UTC
When this happens, it can also be 'fixed' by going into and out of overview mode.
Comment 4 Gustaf Johansson 2011-11-25 19:20:31 UTC
I have this very same problem.

However I am unable to 'fix' it by going into overview mode or using Alt+f2.

But if I open up the Menu (File, About ...) of the window that has focus the 'mouse' gets 'released/fixed'.

The window with focus does not have to be the one on top, ex when pressing a file link in firefox, the download window wont get focus (original firefox window still has it, so I can 'click' behind/through the download window).
If I open the Menu in firefox, then click the download window and then click firefox again the download window will disappear into background as expected.

I get this fault on a regular basis (~75% of the time I switch windows, and the 'unlock/fix' works each time).


When the shell is 'locked' like this and I left-click on 'Activities' I get this printed into .xsession-errors:

  (gnome-terminal:11620): Gdk-CRITICAL **: gdk_window_get_events: assertion `GDK_IS_WINDOW (window)' failed

  (gnome-terminal:11620): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_ref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

  (gnome-terminal:11620): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_object_unref: assertion `G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed


I'm running gnome-shell 3.2.1-1 on Archlinux.
I've tried different focus modes, and all give the same result.
And I have seen no correlation to high IO as Bill has, for me it happens even when the CPU/Disk is idle.

If any help debugging this is needed I will be happy to help since I can fairly easily reproduce the problem.

BR
Comment 5 Yaroslav Halchenko 2014-10-28 15:40:12 UTC
wow -- apparently it is such an old issue!!!  could we somehow help to troubleshoot it since it drives me nuts (I have just switched to gnome from awesome).  I am running gnome-shell 3.14.0-1  on Debian jessie/amd64 ... unfortunately my .xsession-errors is empty although exists.
Comment 6 Yaroslav Halchenko 2015-01-14 02:22:37 UTC
so noone cares to provide guidance to the lost souls? I have to resort to workaround probably like 100 times a day...  Anyone -- please at least point to the right direction on where to look???
Comment 7 Rui Matos 2015-01-14 12:22:53 UTC
Your problem might be different from the originally reported. Can you consistently reproduce it? If so, how? You say that your .xsession-errors is empty, that might be because messages are going elsewhere. If you have systemd, the session's output is probably going to the journal, if so you should be able to find it with journalctl.
Comment 8 Bill Nottingam 2015-01-14 15:58:43 UTC
As original reporter, I haven't seen this in years, but obviously doesn't mean it's not happening to other people.
Comment 9 Yaroslav Halchenko 2015-01-15 16:06:51 UTC
so far description matched I believe.   I can't 100% consistently reproduce it but it seems to happen most of the time when I select some text in one desktop, switch to another (e.g. via super-1) and try to paste immediately with middle-click, which is in my case emulated to be right top corner of touchpad -- I have no physical middle button on this HP zbook 14.  I think it also happened when tried to paste not using mouse but keyboard shortcuts

journalctl -f doesn't report anything relevant around those points, e.g.:

Jan 15 09:02:17 hopa NetworkManager[1173]: <error> [1421330537.750073] [rdisc/nm-lndp-rdisc.c:241] send_rs(): (wlan0): cannot send router solicitation: -1.
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: GetModeLine - scrn: 0 clock: 141000
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: GetModeLine - hdsp: 1920 hbeg: 1936 hend: 1952 httl: 2104
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: vdsp: 1080 vbeg: 1083 vend: 1097 vttl: 1116 flags: 10
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: GetModeLine - scrn: 0 clock: 141000
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: GetModeLine - hdsp: 1920 hbeg: 1936 hend: 1952 httl: 2104
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: vdsp: 1080 vbeg: 1083 vend: 1097 vttl: 1116 flags: 10
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: GetModeLine - scrn: 0 clock: 141000
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: GetModeLine - hdsp: 1920 hbeg: 1936 hend: 1952 httl: 2104
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: vdsp: 1080 vbeg: 1083 vend: 1097 vttl: 1116 flags: 10
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: GetModeLine - scrn: 0 clock: 141000
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: GetModeLine - hdsp: 1920 hbeg: 1936 hend: 1952 httl: 2104
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: vdsp: 1080 vbeg: 1083 vend: 1097 vttl: 1116 flags: 10
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: GetModeLine - scrn: 0 clock: 141000
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: GetModeLine - hdsp: 1920 hbeg: 1936 hend: 1952 httl: 2104
Jan 15 09:02:18 hopa gdm-Xorg-:0[1376]: vdsp: 1080 vbeg: 1083 vend: 1097 vttl: 1116 flags: 10
Jan 15 09:02:21 hopa NetworkManager[1173]: <error> [1421330541.749298] [rdisc/nm-lndp-rdisc.c:241] send_rs(): (wlan0): cannot send router solicitation: -1.
Comment 10 Kjo Hansi Glaz 2017-02-14 15:42:42 UTC
This looks similar to Debian bug https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=771805
Comment 11 GNOME Infrastructure Team 2021-07-05 14:22:24 UTC
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.