GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 677934
gnome-shell (3.6) loss of keyboard on some fullscreen games - fallback mode is o.k.
Last modified: 2021-07-05 14:28:16 UTC
Description of problem: Some full screen apps/games have a loss of keyboard control when using gnome-shell - i.e ZERO keyboard control... This has been the case since gnome 3.x Issue is fixed by using fallback mode / KDE/LXDE, etc I have a nvidia card - using drivers from RPMfusion. - Issue is fixed by using fallback mode - or by toggling fullscreen /resolution - It sounds similar to https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=717103 - it is not all apps/games. To Reproduce:- an example game - download from : http://digitalpaint.org/files/ 1 - install deps alsa-oss.x86_64 alsa-oss-libs.x86_64 alsa-oss-libs.i686 alsa-plugins-oss.i686 alsa-plugins-oss.x86_64 libjpeg-turbo.i686 libpng.i686 libpng10.i686 libpng-compat.i686 libXxf86misc.x86_64 libXxf86misc.i686 libXxf86dga.i686 libXxf86dga.i686 libXxf86vm.i686 libXxf86vm.x86_64 libgpg-error.i686 libgcrypt.i686 libdrm.i686 librtmp.i686 libstdc++-static.i686 2 - run game (note when you first run the game it can take a while to load (sometimes minutes - i suggest you run it in fallback mode first then when its loaded correctly switch to standard gnome3.) 3 - have absolutely no keyboard control - to exit game alt+tab, then ctrl+c It works 100% fine in gnome3 fallback, kde4, lxde, xfce, unity (although its slowest in unity..) -just not standard gnome 3. I have the following revelevent packages... gnome-desktop3-3.4.2-1.fc17.x86_64 gnome-shell-3.4.1-5.fc17.x86_64 xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-295.53-1.fc17.x86_64 xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-295.53-1.fc17.x86_64 xorg-x11-drv-nvidia-libs-295.53-1.fc17.i686 akmod-nvidia-295.53-1.fc17.1.x86_64 nvidia-settings-1.0-18.fc17.x86_64
Are you able to use the Nouveau driver for your graphics card? The bug may well come from a NVidia driver bug. Another thing: once you lose keyboard control, I guess you found no way of stopping the computer other than hard reboot? What do you get if you run Ctrl+Alt+F2? It would be very interesting to get some logs after the bug happens, as it's probably not gnome-shell, but the whole X server which froze. Can you have a look at /var/log/X11/Xorg.*.log and /var/log/messages to find logs about the day and time the bug happened?
I 'could' use the Nouveau driver but that would mean the loss of about 50% of game fps (which is important when playing a game...). Also some games - e.g Oil Rush would not work as Nouveau has no OpenGL4 support... Anyone who wants to play games really needs to use the binary driver at present... Just to confirm:- - The system does NOT crash - its like the game/app doesn't have keyboard focus.. The mouse works fine for example, to get out I alt + tab (which selects the terminal window I launched the game from then ctrl+c to quit the game...) so I can get back to the desktop... In windowed mode the keyboard control does work fine, its like gnome3 is not allowing the fullscreen app to have 'focus' of the kerboard... -> Although Fullscreen works fine in fallback mode (and other DE's)
I should also point out that it effects multiple systems. I have an my new i5 / nvidia 450gts and and older amd x2 4600/nvidia 8500 - completely different motherboard types, etc - same issuee - Both use Nvidia... It ONLY happens with gnome3, unless I use fallback - no other DE is effected so it sounds like a gnome3/nvidia bug to me...
(In reply to comment #2) > I 'could' use the Nouveau driver but that would mean the loss of about 50% of > game fps (which is important when playing a game...). Of course, but please just try to check whether that's the fault of the NVidia driver or not; or try with the integrated i5 GPU. In all the examples you cite, the common factor is the NVidia driver. Also, since the computer does not freeze, please attach the logs I told you in my last comment, after the bug happens.
Hi - I will try shortly and update this ticket Just to confirm.. X doesn't crash at all - just loss of keyboard. One thing I have noticed (the same for Hedgewars..) is that when I launch the game gnome displays all the windows (i.e like you have moved the mouse to the top left) i think have to click on it to launch the game (then lose keyboard 'focus'). I shall try to make a vid to show you . Cheers
Morgan, please answer the following question: do you experience this bug with the nouveau driver? And reopen this bug report please. Thanks.
Hi Sorry for the delay - I gave up using Gnome3.. The bug however still exists - I can confirm it as cinnamon also does the same thing. And yes it still occurs when using the nouveau driver
I am unable to record the issue... If I try with gtk-recordmydesktop the issue doesn't occur... I have launched a cinnamon bug - however its the exact same bug. i.e as if hot corner has been activated - no keyboard control in the app https://bugs.launchpad.net/linuxmint/+bug/1132775
STILL PRESENT ON GNOME 3.6 !!! I have to STILL go to fallback mode / choose a DE that actually works (i.e KDE) in order to actually run the game. Will try gnome 3.8 as soon as its in Arch repos - I imagine it will be be the same. The issue is reproducible 100% of the time. - This occurs on all distros with gnome3.x I have tried.
Hi Morgan, sorry for your bad experience with GNOME. I'd love to fix the issue, but unfortunately I can't manage to get Paintball 2 to run on my system. Do you know of any other games that experience the same issue?
Aha, after fiddling around a bit with my system, I managed to get Paintball 2 to run. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to reproduce the issue -- I made the application full-screen using the in-game Video settings, and set it to my native resolution (1600x900), and was able to receive keyboard input in-game. Do you have a specific set of steps that made the game unable to receive keyboard input, or another application or game to test with?
Jasper - sorry again I have not had gnome3 on my desktop. I have recently installed debian 7 which has gnome 3.4 (and suffers the same bug as the rest of the gnome 3.x series) Did you select fullscreen in the video options ? and are you running nvidia ? I have found one odd work a round... TO attempt to record the issue I tried using recordmydesktop whilst playing the game - oddly if I run recordmydesktop in the background first (in order to record the issue) it prevents the issue occurring - i.e I have keyboard control. If I just launch the game I do not. It is like the activities menu has been activated - i,e the terminal window zooms out when I launch the game and I see thumbnails of desktop windows. in fact I can't even see the game until I click into a window - press enter, etc Its like the focus in gnome is broken Game works 100% of the time in all non gnome 3 based desktops (unity it does work) - cinnamon/elementary has same issues - or in gnome 3 fallback.
I selected fullscreen in the video options, but I am not using NVIDIA. I am using Intel graphics, but given that nouveau also works, I'm hesitant to call it a driver bug. It might be a bug that's fixed in later versions of GNOME. I was testing with GNOME 3.8 and it worked there. The recordMyDesktop workaround makes it sound like a redirection issue, which is strange, but that was fixed up in GNOME 3.8, so it might very well be fixed there. Can you try with a LiveCD that has GNOME 3.8 and see if Paintball works there?
Jasper St. Pierre Thanks for your input. I recently re-installed Arch Linux again. This is fixed in 3.8! Thanks. Is the 'fix' going to be backported to previous versions? The bug is present on gnome 3.0 -> 3.6 Now this bug is fixed I am going to give gnome 3 a proper go on my home desktop (for work I shall stick with KDE at present)
I should point out however - that when i initally made it full screen I lost keyboard input - I had to quit and restart(it then worked - this didn't happen on gnome 3.6 and previous) Also any change to video settings also lose you keyboatrd input - again you have to quit and restart. So although it is 'fixed' it still isn;t perfect (like it is on other de's) If I find any other apps i'll write a bugreport.
Again, I wasn't able to reproduce this. Keyboard input was received perfectly on my end. Does it still fail just running mutter, instead of full gnome-shell (along with something like gnome-panel, as mutter has no UI)?
Just to make it clear I now do have keyboard input in the game! However when I first selected fullscreen, and if I change video options (i.e the resolution) I lose keyboard input (mouse input is ok) - the key board input is back in the terminal window I launched the game from rather than the game. However after selecting fullscreen / changing video options and restarting keyboard works 100% (as long as I don't change video options) So I can now play the game (as long as I don;t change the vid options) Perhaps Nvidia is a factor - the same thing occurs on 3 different desktops (all nvidia - I even tried my work one.. - I don't have any non nvidia machines to try.) Will try with just mutter shortly. thanks
ok - odd - it now seems to be working even after changing resolution! So this is resolved in 3.8. Many thanks. Will it be backported to older gnome versions?
Moving to general, keyboard is for the on-screen keyboard.
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.