[GTK3] Desktop background goes black

[ghost]

The wallpaper disappears at a random moment and the background goes black. Setting another wallpaper then, however, changes it. I use Arch x86-64. This problem seems to be quite an extraordinary one :( I'll be very glad for any kind of help!

[IgnorantGuru]

Unusual. Verify no other desktop managers are involved. Also if anything else is involved with the root window, such as conky, try temporarily disabling to see any effect.

Also, start the initial instance of spacefm in a terminal like this:

killall spacefm
spacefm --desktop

When the problem occurs, check the terminal for any warnings.

[ghost]

Thanks for your reply! I run it with openbox, I don't use any DE, composite manager or anything else at all. Killing conky or running spacefm desktop without it produces the same result.

There are no any specific output in a terminal... This can happen when dragging desktop icons, right-clicking on desktop, minimizing some window, etc. The further killing of spacefm restores the background, though I do not use any tools to set a wallpaper in openbox. Selecting some area on desktop shows a selected part of a wallpaper as shown on the picture:

And here is my wallpaper:

Any ideas?..

UPD: I also use xdotool to capture desktop focus event, I didn't try disabling it before. Since the problem is unsteady, I will write here only when it occurs next time. Or if everything is alright.

[IgnorantGuru]

Nothing else comes to mind, but you may also want to note your spacefm and gtk versions, and what gtk theme you're using.

[ghost]

Just to clarify, it occurs independently of conky or xdotool, with only openbox, tint2 and spacefm running.

spacefm 0.9.4-1 gtk 3.10.7-1 gtk theme "Adwaita"

[srgh]

I can confirm that this also happens on Fedora 20 running openbox, is mostly random, but I have seen this multiple times after the conclusion of the 'sudo yum update' command.

[IgnorantGuru]

Thanks - what are the openbox versions here?

From the description thus far, this sounds like an issue in openbox, especially the way the rectangle showed the image within it. And no recent changes to how SpaceFM paints the root window. afair it does so only initially, it doesn't keep repainting it, except with the rubberbanding.

[srgh]

openbox 3.5.2-2

[IgnorantGuru]

Using openbox 3.5.2 on Debian I'm not seeing any sign of this.

[gothmog123]

Happens to me too and I'm using gnome. Switching to spacefm-gtk2 fixes the issue.

[ghost]

Ok, I have not seen it for about a month... Probably, this was completely solved after some updates

upd: Unfortunately, it was not. I also switched to gtk2 version, thanks @gothmog123

[mati75]

Most development and maintenance on the SpaceFM and udevil projects is indefinitely suspended. See IgnorantGuru's Hiatus

[Glanzer]

Problem also occurs in compiz-standalone under arch. switching to spacefm-gtk2 fixes it as well, thanks for that hint.

[ghost]

Problem in gentoo amd64 with awesomewm as well:

aditya@aditya-desktop ( ~ )>> emerge -vp spacefm

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies... done! [ebuild R ] x11-misc/spacefm-0.9.4 USE="startup-notification" 0 kB

Total: 1 package (1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 0 kB

[IgnorantGuru]

In #478, RaveYoda mentions that with the new hand branch (or next), you can "use nitrogen or xwinwrap" to set a background. That may be another workaround for this apparently-GTK3 issue.

[ghost]

@IgnorantGuru @jqrsd I would like to advise that in the new version of spacefm when setting the desktop to transparent it brought up a warning advising that an composit manager is required to work properly. It may not have poped up for you though.... Still, try using xcompmgr, a compositing manager, (ultra light and is stand alone) and seeing if that helps. Also, XWinWrap doesn't work right for me in Openbox so try nitrogen first then something like feh to manage the wallpaper. I use pekwm which seems to handle nitrogen or XWinWrap just fine. So you may want to look into that too.