Ubuntu
xserver-xorg-video-nv package

Unresponsive UI Elements

Asked by Kris

Many of my UI elements become completely unresponsive. This happens in both Unity and GNOME Classic. My version is 11.04 and as far as I know I'm up to date on packages and updates.

There are lot's of examples of this, but usually only some of the UI elements are unresponsive (e.g., I can't move a window, but I can click a menu somewhere else). The system is not lagging, the UI simply doesn't work. Sometimes I can get it to work by doing something unrelated (e.g., closing one window with Alt-F4 might allow me to move another frozen window).

This begins to happen immediately after I login. The behavior is repeatable, but there are so many UI elements that turn on and off that it can get very unpredictable.

I can usually press super to get the dash and Alt-F2 to get a command prompt. Also Alt-Shift-T seems to usually work to bring up a working Terminal (at least one that accepts commands, even if I can't move the window).

Does anyone have any ideas on what might be causing this? The behavior is highly unpredictable and extremely frustrating. I should note that key commands don't always work, even though they seem to in my examples. So I don't think it's just a mouse issue.

Thanks for any help.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Does it happen as all users?

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Kris (kris-p-harper) said : 		#2

I just tried and no, it doesn't. In fact, making a new user and logging into that account, fixes the problem there and on my original account. Deleting the user makes the problem come back.

Also, I have to login to the new user before the problem stops on my usual user.

This works as a temporary solution, although I'd really prefer to know what's going on (now I'm really confused). Also, I don't particularly want a second account if it's unnecessary.

Do you know what's causing the problem and making it come back when I delete the second account?

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Kris (kris-p-harper) said : 		#3

More information:

The second user account only gets me so far. I thought logging into the new user once would fix the problem indefinitely, but this is not the case. If I restart or even suspend my system, I need to login to the new account each time before my normal account works.

I'm so confused about what's happening here.

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Sam_ (and-sam) said : 		#4

If you did any customizing on unity or compiz via CCSM try to unset unity first.
Switch to tty (virtual console, text mode only): ctrl+alt+f1
Login with username and passwd.
Run:
unity --reset

Back to GUI: ctrl+alt+f7
Or reboot.

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Kris (kris-p-harper) said : 		#5

Resetting unity had no effect, although this might be expected since the problem exists on both Unity and GNOME 2.

The unity --reset command segfaulted though. I tried piping the command to a file

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/2214330/output.txt

but it stopped part way through. There was a lot more output to the screen. I don't know another way to capture the output. I'm not sure the segfault is the problem though because both window managers have the issue.

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Sam_ (and-sam) said : 		#6

Segfaults can usually be viewed in /var/log/syslog. Did you reboot?

Try:
unity --replace

If nothing helps reset Compiz configuration via tty and reboot.
gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compiz-1
gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/compizconfig-1

In case mv config files.
mv ~/.config/compiz-1/compizconfig/config ~/compizconfig.broken

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Kris (kris-p-harper) said : 		#7

unity --replace also segfaulted, and unity failed to restart. When I went back to the GUI desktop there were no UI elements at all (no launcher, panel, etc.).

I then tried resetting the compiz config files and rebooting, which also didn't help.

This is the line in syslog about the segfault

Aug 14 11:26:43 Ubuntu-Desktop kernel: [ 217.921661] compiz[2539]: segfault at 58 ip 00007f674f345c51 sp 00007fffdfc43508 error 4 in libnvidia-glcore.so.270.41.06[7f674e3b3000+144e000]

Maybe it has something to do with my graphics card settings? I don't think I made any changes there though, and from what I can tell the settings are identical on the new user (where things are fine) and my current user.

I definitely didn't make any changes just before things broke (besides installing software updates, which may be the problem, I guess).

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Sam_ (and-sam) said : 		#8

Maybe review update history to find out which one could've introduced the issue. In case to report a bug later on or try dpkg-reconfigure it.

Some user obviously had the same issues, unfortunately didn't tell if it got solved.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/46255/x-freezes-every-couple-of-hours-compiz-segfault-at-58-error-4-in-libnvidia-glc

Another tried option vmalloc=256M in Grub.
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=192916

Since I don't use nvidia maybe have a look through the list or search nvidia bug reports.
http://askubuntu.com/questions/tagged/compiz+nvidia

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