User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9b5) Gecko/2008050509 Firefox/3.0b5 Build Identifier: Version: Terminal 0.2.8 (xubuntu specific?) This happened after a an dist-upgrade of xubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 which initially failed and had to resumed on the command line interface (dpkg . After the upgrade the xfce configuration was broken. I removed '.gnome*' and '.config' directories in my home directory. This fixed the xfce config problems but not the black window frames. I first suspected that the whole system is still broken. But currently it seems everything is ok (except the terminal window frame). Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. upgrade from xubuntu 7.10 to 8.04 2. Laptop (ev. X or xfce only) crashed 3. Restart of xfce --> black window frames 4. sudo aptitude dist-upgrade fixed brocken stuff caused by crash in step 2 --> black window frames remain 5. purged xfce config --> black window frames remain Expected Results: Window frame should not be black but according to 'Window Manager Style' choosen and show controls on the left and right and the title in the middle. The Terminals About Boxes Window frame is light green with black lines and dots in it. Additionaly red dots appear in the terminals window frame when you do the following: 1. open the About Box 2. move it such that it goes below the lower window frame of the terminal 3. click on the terminals window frame to activate it Sorry, hard to describe. If you are interested to see what I mean I may send you a PNG-screenshot. Please send me an e-mail in such case. Workaround: use xterm (==> severity: Minor)
Created attachment 1627 Screenshot Terminal Black Window Frame
Another detail: After having disabled and enbaled window borders ('View-->Show Window Borders') the window frames title bar looks like an additional menu bar (like copied pixelwise, but not functional).
See also https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-terminal/+bug/194769 It looks related to Neomagic graphic chips, is this what you have?
Yes indeed it is a NeoMagic graphics chip: $ grep -r magic /var/log/Xorg.0.log (**) | |-->Device "Neomagic Corporation NM2200 [MagicGraph 256AV]" (II) Loader magic: 0x81dc500 (--) PCI:*(1:0:0) Neomagic Corporation NM2200 [MagicGraph 256AV] rev 32, Mem @ 0xf5000000/24, 0xf4400000/22, 0xf4100000/20 (II) LoadModule: "neomagic" (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers//neomagic_drv.so (II) Module neomagic: vendor="X.Org Foundation" (II) NEOMAGIC: Driver for Neomagic chipsets: neo2070, neo2090, neo2093,
Please see my patch and comments in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-terminal/+bug/194769
(In reply to comment #5) > Please see my patch and comments in > > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/xfce4-terminal/+bug/194769 I don't think commenting out all of the compositing code to fix a bug appearing on a specific graphic chipset is the way to go. Probably the drivers authors could find a cleaner fix...
(In reply to comment #6) > I don't think commenting out all of the compositing code to fix a bug appearing > on a specific graphic chipset is the way to go. > Probably the drivers authors could find a cleaner fix... > Never said it was. If you read all my comments, you'll notice that I don't really have a clue as to *why* the compositing code is causing the problem with the MediaMagic chips. I only demonstrated that removing the code fixes the problem, ergo, the compositing code is causing *at least* the MediaMagic problem. I know nothing about compositing or video drivers or how they interact. What really surprised me (and I am probably wrong about this) is that it seems that the Xfce terminal program is the only Xfce app that has compositing code built-in (as opposed to leaving compositing to the wm). This causes the "look & feel" to be inconsistent with the other apps. Why not remove it and let the wm run compositing which seems to work well for all the other apps (and for terminal as well once the patch is applied). BTW, I believe the code in question is causing other problems with the terminal application, and I cross posted to a number of terminal-related bug lists where the symptoms seem to be resolved by turning off compositing, changing resolutions, changed video drivers, etc. I don't expect that the final solution will be to remove the offending code. Obviously, someone spent a good deal of time adding the "feature" to terminal for whatever purpose, and might have had a good reason to do so. Unfortunately, since this change, there seem to have been a number of seemingly unrelated bugs which have been seriously affecting the usability of terminal for many over a significant period of time, and no one has come up with a proper solution yet. My only purpose was to identify where in the code the problems lie, and let the expert hackers take it from there. As an alternative, there is a great deal of advice to just use Gnome-Terminal or Xterm. In that case, I agree...no need to remove the compositing code.
(In reply to comment #7) Just to continue my rant a little bit: I noticed that not only does terminal override the WM for its client area, it does the same for the borders, menus, and modal dialogs as well. This seriously violates at least my version of the KISS principle. The whole purpose of the WM is so that the apps do not need to render these things, and that the look-and-feel stays consistent over a broad range of apps, as determined by the WM settings.
*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 5529 ***