Bug 161733

Summary:	kwin goes into "window move mode" (locked ALT key); can't interact with windows anymore
Product:	[Unmaintained] kdelibs	Reporter:	Manuel Nickschas <sputnick>
Component:	general	Assignee:	kdelibs bugs <kdelibs-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED DUPLICATE
Severity:	normal	CC:	l.lunak
Priority:	NOR
Version:	unspecified
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	Compiled Sources
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Manuel Nickschas 2008-05-07 11:19:11 UTC

Version:            (using Devel)
Installed from:    Compiled sources
Compiler:          gcc-4.2.3 
OS:                Linux

Since maybe about a week, kwin exhibits a quite annoying bug where it goes into "window move mode". This means it acts as if the ALT key is pressed all the time, which, in fact, it is not. All I can do then is move and resize windows, but I cannot interact with them anymore until I restart KDE. Until recently, I never had that happen to me; now it happens several times a day, so I believe it must be a recent change.

I could not quite figure out yet how to reliably trigger this behavior. I seem to be getting it often when pressing Alt+F2 to start krunner, I managed to trigger it once using Alt-Tab, and just now I canceled a progress dialog which triggered it.

I can reproduce this behaviour on both of my KDE4 machines, one using ATI with no desktop effects, the other using nVidia with desktop effects enabled. Both machines are updated daily.

Comment 1 Manuel Nickschas 2008-05-07 11:33:00 UTC

I just stumbled over Bug 158214 which seems to be related, though that one has been closed as WORKSFORME. If it's the same issue, it seems to have reappeared recently. I'll try to kill kded4 next time this happens to me and report back.

Comment 2 Fredrik Karlsson 2008-05-08 10:45:54 UTC

Happens here to, kded4 stops responding and leaves me in this mode. Most often when using global shortcuts. Killing kded4 gets me back to normal.

Comment 3 Manuel Nickschas 2008-05-08 11:16:45 UTC

Yes, just tried it, killing kded4 helps, so this is not a kwin issue at all. Updated Bug 161734 also - wonder if I should open another one for the hanging explicitly?

Comment 4 Michael Pyne 2008-05-11 21:36:47 UTC

Does this still occur with the latest kdelibs?

According to this email the problem should be fixed: http://lists.kde.org/?l=kde-core-devel&m=121026299907374&w=2

In addition if you add the following to $KDEHOME/share/config/kdeglobals you should be able to implement the fix without having to recompile kdelibs:

[DirWatch]
PreferredMethod=inotify

Note that this only works if your kernel has inotify support enabled (anything since about 2.6.13 IIRC should).

Comment 5 Michael Pyne 2008-05-11 21:41:29 UTC

Note this is a duplicate of bug 158214.  If the fix I referred to does not work, please reopen the original bug (158214).

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of 158214 ***