Desktop panel bar in middle of screen; display vertically offset

[iancrossfield]

After functioning mostly fine for about a week, my new GalliumOS installation now starts up with the control panel bar (with clock, battery status, start menu, etc.) in the middle of the screen, on top of whatever else is running. It's as if the entire display is shifted vertically half a screen upward -- new applications start mostly above the upper visible edge, and only with Alt-Space-Move can I move them down into the visible region (where they are covered up by the panel bar; see attached screenshot). I've also attached the output of inxi -Fx, but I'm not sure what other debugging information might be required on this one.

Thoughts? inxi-Fx.log

[ghost]

Wow, that's whack, I've never seen anything quite like it on any distro. Clearly the window manager knows where the desktop area is supposed to be because your Firefox window is properly maximized. The other symptoms are extremely contrary to that. Right now I'm thinking it might have something to do with the Xorg "canvas" (or the desktop area, including all monitors combined, on a single display setup the canvas should just be the same resolution as the display, when you're using multiple monitors the canvas would be the size of all your displays combined, plus some blank space if the displays are different resolutions since the canvas must be a rectangle), please check your Display settings for anything out of the ordinary.

[iancrossfield]

Thanks @coltondrg . The Firefox window wasn't initially in the correct position; it opened halfway up off the top of the screen, and it was only with an Alt-space-Move and the arrow keys that I was able to bring it down into the visible part of the screen.

I'm just using one display, the built-in display that's part of this Pixelbook 2017 ("Eve"). Which Display settings would you suggest that I check, in particular? I'm running at 1680x1050 resolution, and I've re-attached a (cleaned) output of inxi -Fx.

Finally, I should note that after several rounds of reboot-and-pray my GalliumOS setup is now functioning normally again, with the panel bar in the correct place at the bottom of the screen. Any suggestions on how to diagnose this issue would still be welcome, so that I can properly document them next time it pops up. inxi-Fi_clean.log

[ghost]

Oops, I didn't blow up the screenshot and missed the fact that the browser window is in fact windowed and just resized to fill most of the screen. My bad. The inxi log doesn't say anything about the Xorg canvas. Right now I'm really hoping for your sake that the issue doesn't crop up again, because like I said, I've never seen anything like it before on any distro, and for that reason it's extremely difficult to troubleshoot by performing a web search (as you tried), I was initially going to suggest saying "Xfce" to DDG instead of "GalliumOS" but I tried that, then I got even more vague and used "Linux" and "Xorg" and I still got absolutely nothing. The one thing I didn't try was using Google (and I'm not going to) but at this point I'm all but certain that you're a unicorn. The display settings I was referring to are just the ordinary Xfce Displays settings, I'm almost positive that it'll pop right up if you open the Whisker menu and type "Displays". Honestly for an issue like that any other display settings utility compatible with xrandr should work, including the xrandr command line. If that doesn't help, back up your files and reinstall GalliumOS. It is easy to do this while preserving your personal data. I am concerned about the "reboot and pray" method if you performed "several rounds" of it. I cannot imagine what could cause it to randomly not work one day after one reboot, then continue not working for several more reboots, and then randomly start working again and stay that way. Have you rebooted since the issue was resolved to see if that's persistent? If the thought occurs to me next time I'm working hard on GalliumOS packages, I'll fiddle around and try to reproduce it, but I don't have any hardware similar to yours and I highly doubt I'll find anything at any rate.

Sorry for the massive wall of text. I'm going to close this issue if that's alright with you. If I manage to reproduce it or you continue having issues after attempting to reinstall we'll reopen it. Thanks for contributing!