Bug 272663 - Auto-hiding panel sometimes moves to middle of the screen when being viewed
Summary: Auto-hiding panel sometimes moves to middle of the screen when being viewed
Status: RESOLVED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: plasma4
Classification: Unmaintained
Component: panel (show other bugs)
Version: 4.8.3
Platform: Fedora RPMs Linux
: NOR normal
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Plasma Bugs List
URL:
Keywords:
: 271155 271532 277248 297189 (view as bug list)
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2011-05-07 00:48 UTC by Dmitri
Modified: 2012-10-27 09:30 UTC (History)
19 users (show)

See Also:
Latest Commit:
Version Fixed In: 4.9.1
Sentry Crash Report:


Attachments
Screenshot showing bad panel position (78.69 KB, image/jpeg)
2011-05-07 00:48 UTC, Dmitri
Details
Proper panel behavior (119.14 KB, image/jpeg)
2011-05-07 23:34 UTC, Dmitri
Details
Improper Panel Behavior (93.58 KB, image/jpeg)
2011-05-07 23:37 UTC, Dmitri
Details
Config file causing the problem (1.52 KB, text/plain)
2012-05-22 12:06 UTC, Martin Doucha
Details
Diff to the good config file (1.97 KB, patch)
2012-05-22 12:09 UTC, Martin Doucha
Details

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Description Dmitri 2011-05-07 00:48:25 UTC
Created attachment 59710 [details]
Screenshot showing bad panel position

Version:           unspecified (using KDE 4.6.2) 
OS:                Linux

An auto-hiding panel aligned with the top of the screen will sometimes move from the top to the middle of the screen. The panel still functions after movement, including visual glow effect when mouse is near, and appearing when the mouse moves over it's new position.
Switching to a different desktop or starting up a new application will usually restore the panel to the top. Switching back to the other desktop often makes it move again.
Behavior seems to be most commonly associated when a kopete window pops up, however I think I've seen it happen for other applications and windows too.

Reproducible: Sometimes

Steps to Reproduce:
Blank desktop/workspace. A new window appears, e.g. a chat window for kopete, or an application is started. User moves mosue to top of screen to interact with panel.

Actual Results:  
Panel suddenly jumps to random y-position on the screen.

Expected Results:  
Panel appears and stays at the top of the screen.

Screenshot is attached to show the error more clearly. Note that normally the panel is auto-hidden at the top of the screen.
Comment 1 Duncan 2011-05-07 04:09:19 UTC
This might be related to my bug #271532, regression between 4.6.1 and 4.6.2, still present in 4.6.3: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=271532
Comment 2 Dmitri 2011-05-07 23:31:12 UTC
After some investigation I have been able to reproduce this bug 100% of the time. When there is a window near the top of the screen, the panel is unable to fit in the space between the top of the screen and the top of the focused window. In this case the panel jumps down and snaps to the bottom of the window; or as far down as necessary so that it doesn't overlap any windows. If the focused window is maximized, the panel can't fit anywhere and stays at the top of the screen.
I'll add some attachements showing the difference between normal and improper panel behavior.
Comment 3 Dmitri 2011-05-07 23:34:09 UTC
Created attachment 59749 [details]
Proper panel behavior

Panel behaves correctly when it has enough between top of screen and nearest window.
Comment 4 Dmitri 2011-05-07 23:37:15 UTC
Created attachment 59750 [details]
Improper Panel Behavior

Panel jumps to window button once there is not enough space for it to fit between top of screen and top of window.
Comment 5 Dmitri 2011-05-11 06:15:34 UTC
A temporary work-around to this issue can be done by creating a special window rule:
Window Class: Plasma
Window Role: Dock(panel)
Geometry Option: Placement = Force: No Placement

It seems that the window placement functionality is what's trying to move the plasma panel out of the way?
Comment 6 Leandro Santiago da Silva 2011-07-19 13:05:44 UTC
It also happens with me. I have two panels which are auto-hidden: one on top of the screen and other in the bottom-left.

To reproduce this bug, I resize a window and put keep a free space in it's border. When I put the mouse on the top of the screen, the panel isn't there, but under that window. Even when I maximize the window, the panel continues there.

To restore the panel to it's original place, I put the mouse it (with the maximized window) and, on mouse out, it go back to the top.

It sometime also happens with lateral panels, but I couldn't reproduce right now.
Comment 7 Leandro Santiago da Silva 2011-07-19 13:06:23 UTC
It also happens with me. I have two panels which are auto-hidden: one on top of the screen and other in the bottom-left.

To reproduce this bug, I resize a window and put keep a free space in it's border. When I put the mouse on the top of the screen, the panel isn't there, but under that window. Even when I maximize the window, the panel continues there.

To restore the panel to it's original place, I put the mouse it (with the maximized window) and, on mouse out, it go back to the top.

It sometime also happens with lateral panels, but I couldn't reproduce right now.
Comment 8 Patrick "Finn" Robins 2011-07-29 15:34:20 UTC
I have had this issue on both Kubuntu 10.04 and now with Debian unstable running KDE 4.6.5. I only run one panel at the top of the screen with autohide on. If I have multiple windows open on one desktop it can sometimes be a little difficult to figure out which window the panel has decided to move below, leaving me to use alt+F1 to get it to show itself.
Comment 9 k_the_first 2011-08-19 11:42:04 UTC
I experiencing the same problem on my desktop computer but not on my laptop. turning composition on or off makes no difference.
Comment 10 k_the_first 2011-08-19 11:52:16 UTC
sorry
both are running the same KDE version 4.6.5-2 from Debian but have different videocards the Desktop has a 4 year old nvidia the laptop an 1 year amd both are run on the proprietary drivers
Comment 11 Javier Ortega Conde (Malkavian) 2011-09-07 23:31:10 UTC
Same here with KDE 4.6.5 (Debian testing)
Comment 12 k_the_first 2011-09-08 11:22:11 UTC
Bug seems to be same as 277248 (URL: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=277248)
found solution for me (recreate plasmaconfiguration (description: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=277248#c7 )) .
Comment 13 hinsch.martin 2011-10-27 15:04:26 UTC
Same with kubuntu 11.04, kde 4.7.2, vertical auto-hide panel (left border)
Comment 14 Thijs 2012-01-19 11:48:06 UTC
*** Bug 277248 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 15 Thijs 2012-01-19 11:52:00 UTC
*** Bug 271155 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 16 Thijs 2012-01-19 12:04:04 UTC
There seem to be a bunch of these reports. What they have in common:
1) Non-consistency
2) Autohide
3) It's about panels that are not on the bottom of the screen
4) Introduced somewhere during 4.6, but still there
5) Many seem to have multi monitors
6) Often triggered by a window touching the relevant screen edge

Possibly, this bug is related to 281029, where the wandering happens for non-autohide panels after some kind of restart. Maybe, but this is far fetched, it is even related to the wandering cashew (bug 287809) with as a meta-bug: Plasma cannot count.
Comment 17 Dennis Schridde 2012-01-19 20:00:10 UTC
(In reply to comment #16)
> There seem to be a bunch of these reports. What they have in common:
> 1) Non-consistency
> 2) Autohide
Happened to me for both types.
> 3) It's about panels that are not on the bottom of the screen
Confirming - never happened to me for a bottom aligned panel.
> 4) Introduced somewhere during 4.6, but still there
> 5) Many seem to have multi monitors
I dont.
> 6) Often triggered by a window touching the relevant screen edge

For me it has something to do with Yakuake. When Yakuake is open and plasma restarts (e.g. due to a crash), the panel will be at the bottom of the Yakuake window. Same happens on another machine with an auto-hide panel that moves there even without a prior plasma crash.
Comment 18 lord.awikatchikaen 2012-03-14 19:02:13 UTC
still present in kde 4.8.1
Comment 19 Pham Ngoc Hai 2012-04-29 01:12:02 UTC
*** This bug has been confirmed by popular vote. ***
Comment 20 Pham Ngoc Hai 2012-04-29 01:18:41 UTC
This happened to me on both Gentoo and Archlinux, but recently it does not happen in Archlinux anymore.
Comment 21 SP 2012-04-29 21:08:58 UTC
I had the same problem on one machine.  The others had the same installation but not this problem.  Although widgets and the panel were locked it would jump to the middle or lower part of the screen if an open window was moved to the top of the screen.   It appears to have been resolved by increasing the height of the panel slightly in panel settings.
Comment 22 Dennis Schridde 2012-05-06 09:40:27 UTC
Persists in KDE 4.8.3.
Comment 23 SP 2012-05-09 15:31:04 UTC
I reported on 04-29-12 that I had this problem on only one of my computers - all running the same installation of Fedora 16 and the latest KDE 4.  I was able to fix it by increasing the height of the panel slightly. After replacing a monitor and increasing the screen resolution on yet another machine the same problem appeared.  Again, I was able to resolve it by increasing the panel height.  It would seem that this bug is related to screen resolution and panel height and is temporarily resolved by increasing the panel height.
Comment 24 k_the_first 2012-05-17 14:06:10 UTC
For me deleting "~/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktoprc" helps then i log in an set the panel to auto hide again ervery other plasma config (plasmoids and so on) stayed the same.
Comment 25 Dennis Schridde 2012-05-21 07:30:44 UTC
(In reply to comment #24)
> For me deleting "~/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktoprc" helps then i log in
> an set the panel to auto hide again ervery other plasma config (plasmoids
> and so on) stayed the same.
Confirming this. Logout, Login as root on the console, killall -u $myuser, delete the file, logout root and login graphically and the issue appears to be fixed.
Comment 26 Duncan 2012-05-21 08:05:00 UTC
(In reply to comment #25)
> (In reply to comment #24)
> > For me deleting "~/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktoprc" helps then i log in
> > an set the panel to auto hide again ervery other plasma config (plasmoids
> > and so on) stayed the same.
> Confirming this

Thanks, both of you.  That should get us much closer.

Could someone who still has the old plasma-desktoprc file please carefully copy it elsewhere, then delete the ~/.kde/share/config/ copy of it and confirm that the problem is fixed on relogin?

A copy of the new version or a diff between the bad and the good one might be useful as well.

We have two reports that this file is the problem, so if we had a copy of the triggering version and either a good version or the diff between them, that should pretty well nail the culprit lines, and hopefully allow a good code-fix.

It would also allow anyone else with the problem to verify whether they had the bad lines and try deleting just them if so.   It's always possible there's more than one trigger for the problem, so if we get a culprit line or set of lines and someone with the problem doesn't have that set, we know there's another problem with the same symptoms to investigate.

(I'm just a user, but CCed as I had a related problem at one point, see comment #1 and bug # 271532.)

Duncan
Comment 27 Myriam Schweingruber 2012-05-21 11:48:27 UTC
Please, people, don't forget to update the versions
Comment 28 Martin Doucha 2012-05-22 12:06:39 UTC
Created attachment 71291 [details]
Config file causing the problem

This is the offending file from my system. When I've moved it from KDE's config directory and set panel to autohide again, the problem didn't reappear after next relogin.
Comment 29 Martin Doucha 2012-05-22 12:09:25 UTC
Created attachment 71292 [details]
Diff to the good config file

Here's a diff of the offending file to freshly generated config file after all settings were applied by hand.
Comment 30 Duncan 2012-05-22 13:14:03 UTC
The most immediate "jump-out" from looking at that config file and diff, is that plasma stores information per panel size.  That aligns nicely with the reports of people fixing the problem by changing the panel size slightly, since that would create a new section (assuming they hadn't used that size before) in the config, without the issue.

Another takeaway is that there's a bit of config stored for every size and orientation you've had each panel in.  If you've moved it around and resized it, trying to figure out the best size and orientation, that means you have a whole list of settings for various orientations and sizes that aren't being used at the current time, and can probably be deleted, thus simplifying the file quite a bit.  That's why the diff has so many more deleted lines than changed/added, because the new config doesn't have all those extra size and location settings.

But as a result, there's way more lines in the diff than I had hoped, and I've not yet noticed a possible culprit for this bug, yet.  But I've not looked too hard yet, just noticed those two things jumping out at me right away...

One more thing to note, looking at my own copy of that file:  Most of the settings in that file appear to be pretty minor, dialog sizes, panel autohide settings, etc.  But it also appears to store (or to have stored in the past, perhaps) the krunner plugin settings, if you've changed them from the default, say disabling some of them, that appears to be stored in that file, so expect all the krunner plugins to be enabled (or whatever the default is, I'd guess all enabled) again, if you delete the file.

But that part shouldn't be related and it isn't in the bad file posted, so if you have changed them and want to keep that, it should be safe to leave at least those krunner and plugin settings in the file, or copy them to the new one once it's recreated.
Comment 31 Myriam Schweingruber 2012-05-22 13:33:14 UTC
*** Bug 271532 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 32 Thijs 2012-05-30 16:49:34 UTC
*** Bug 297189 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Comment 33 Andrey Rakhmatullin 2012-08-09 19:41:45 UTC
Do you still need broken configs?
Comment 34 Rolf Eike Beer 2012-08-14 18:15:49 UTC
Git commit 59b1e4e4387a9194125bfac35a23ad885c9c24e6 by Rolf Eike Beer.
Committed on 16/07/2012 at 18:27.
Pushed by dakon into branch 'KDE/4.9'.

fix wrong panel positioning, especially when more than one monitor is present

This workaround was found by Kai Dombrowe. This is likely just papering over a
deeper issue, but for the time being this just makes the panel work.
Related: bug 283974, bug 281029
REVIEW:105596
FIXED-IN:4.9.1

M  +2    -0    plasma/desktop/shell/panelview.cpp

http://commits.kde.org/kde-workspace/59b1e4e4387a9194125bfac35a23ad885c9c24e6
Comment 35 Victor B. Gonzalez 2012-08-24 14:16:08 UTC
I've had an issue (this may be it) where my top plasma panel would move down about 25 pixels, leaving a gap at the top. I personally this has something to do with dual monitors and the plasma "search and launch" widget. My work around for solving this is

mkdir $HOME/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop.bak/
mv $HOME/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-screen-1* $HOME/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop.bak/

I swear I tried so many things and this was the one that nipped it right in the butt for me. I cam across this idea from temporarily solving the problem when I enabled the second monitor (TV), and noticing the "search and launch" widget hanging out at the top. My habit is to always move it and I noticed when I was done using the TV, I restarted X and on login, my panel was at the correct position.

I noticed though, for some reason, enabling the TV again would cause my top panel to move on subsequent logins. I ended up putting the following in a startup script and now I no longer have the problem.

mv $HOME/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop-screen-1* $HOME/.kde/share/config/plasma-desktop.bak/

I'm convinced something is wrong with the plasma-desktop-screen files.

This may not be a great idea if you're constantly using dual screens or have worked hard on configuring your plasma screens and would like to keep them. Just a possible answer I guess.
Comment 36 Dennis Schridde 2012-08-24 18:51:47 UTC
(In reply to comment #35)
> I personally this has something
> to do with dual monitors and the plasma "search and launch" widget.
I have just one monitor and am experiencing the same problem. Search&Launch is the Alt+F2 thing? My idea was that the Plasma Kidney on the desktop is blocking the space for the panel, but I was not able to verify that somehow.
Comment 37 SP 2012-08-24 19:00:30 UTC
Try increasing  the panel height slightly.  I have found this permanently resolves the issue.
Comment 38 antonio.toma 2012-09-16 07:32:44 UTC
It looks like after upgrading to 4.9.1 this is solved. I say 'it looks like' because I had just increased panel height as SP suggested. Can someone with a clean config confirm?
Comment 39 Dennis Schridde 2012-09-16 10:27:26 UTC
(In reply to comment #38)
> It looks like after upgrading to 4.9.1 this is solved. I say 'it looks like'
> because I had just increased panel height as SP suggested. Can someone with
> a clean config confirm?
The sibling bug #281029 was also fixed in 4.9.1, so this seems likely.
Comment 40 Myriam Schweingruber 2012-09-17 20:19:12 UTC
I can't reproduce this here with KDE 4.9.1, closing
Comment 41 Martin Doucha 2012-10-27 09:30:14 UTC
I can confirm this bug is fixed. I recently hit it again when I switched screen resolutions. When I upgraded to KDE 4.9.2 a few days later, the bug disappeared without any changes to the config file mentioned above.