Menus don't expand to anything

[Patrick Bulteel]

I discussed this bug on the forum (​https://winswitch.org/forum/topic/10/) and I've finally managed to get a screenshot of first bug I mentioned.

Sometimes the menu's don't expand to anything. Example: I see the local server, I click on Start Applications and the menu is empty (I just see a sliver showing something should be there, it's just not populated with anything.) However, this happens with ALL the menu options for all attached winswitch servers/connections. When this happens I can't quit the applet. However, from another system I can start applications from my that system.

See attached screenshot.

[Patrick Bulteel]

Screenshot of Winswitch applet without menu entries.

[Antoine Martin]

Thanks for the screenshot, that's very helpful - I hope this isn't another weird Ubuntu related bug. Are you using Unity?

I'll fire up some virtual machines and try to reproduce.

[Patrick Bulteel]

Nope, not using Unity. I'm using the traditional Gnome.

I've found the logs but not sure what is useful to you. I'm attaching them from that day.

I see a few "connection lost" which may be when I left the office and went home. Not sure as I need to go through them myself and see if there's anything in there.

[Patrick Bulteel]

gz of log from the day of the error.

[Antoine Martin]

Thanks for this, I think you're right it has something to do with losing the connection to the server, I'll review the code asap.

[Antoine Martin]

I think this should be fixed in v0.12.10

[Antoine Martin]

Interesting bits from the logfile:

[II] 2011/16/09 19:35:44 ServerLink.connect_to_server() already connecting
[II] 2011/16/09 19:35:44 ConchStdioRemoteClientLinkFactory.clientConnectionFailed(<twisted.internet.tcp.Connector instance at 0x49c6290>,[Failure instance: Traceback (failure with no frames): <class 'twisted.internet.error.DNSLookupError'>: DNS lookup failed: address 'mythuk01.local.' not found: [Errno -2] Name or service not known.\n])
[EE] 2011/16/09 19:35:44 ConchStdioRemoteClientLinkFactory.disconnected()
[II] 2011/16/09 19:35:44 WinSwitchApplet.mdns_remove(Window Switch for Patrick Bulteel on mythuk01)
[II] 2011/16/09 19:35:44 WinSwitchApplet.mdns_remove(Window Switch for Patrick Bulteel on LONL60199865A)
[EE] 2011/16/09 19:35:44 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce04d0>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 19:35:44 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce04d0>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 19:35:44 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce04d0>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 19:35:44 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce04d0>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[II] 2011/16/09 19:35:45 WinSwitchApplet.attention(Cannot connect to SSH server on mythuk01,None)
[II] 2011/16/09 19:35:45 WinSwitchApplet.attention(Cannot connect to SSH server on mythuk01,None)
[II] 2011/16/09 19:35:45 WinSwitchApplet.attention(Cannot connect to SSH server on mythuk01,None)
[EE] 2011/16/09 19:35:48 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce07a0>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 19:35:48 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce07a0>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 19:35:48 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce07a0>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 19:35:48 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce07a0>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 19:35:48 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce07a0>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 19:35:48 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce07a0>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[II] 2011/16/09 20:47:06 WinSwitchApplet.mdns_remove(Window Switch for MythTV user on mythuk01)
[II] 2011/16/09 20:47:06 WinSwitchApplet.mdns_remove(Window Switch for Patrick Bulteel on mythuk01)
[EE] 2011/16/09 20:47:11 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce0710>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 20:47:11 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce0710>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 20:47:11 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce0710>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 20:47:11 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce0710>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 20:47:11 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce0710>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)
[EE] 2011/16/09 20:47:11 TwistedBonjourListener.resolve_callback(<DNSServiceRef object at 0x4ce0710>,0,3,-65537,None,None,0,)

We probably shouldn't fire WinSwitchApplet.attention so many times with the same message, why is that happening?

[Estiforta]

Is there any known work-around for this problem? I'm using Ubuntu precise and what happened is that the menus seemed to work initially and then slowly began to stop working. Now none of the menus pop up (except the main menu). On my server the icon doesn't show up in the applet bar but that may or may not be related.

The installed version of winswitch is 0.12.13-2.

Is there an alternate way to use/access winswitch other than the applet menu? Unfortunately this issue takes winswitch from awesome to useless for me.

[Antoine Martin]

Potential workarounds:

• Untick 'Use Nested Menus' in Configuration -> User Interface
• start winswitch with --window-notray

RANT:
The real workaround is to not use Ubuntu AFAIK, if it wasn't so popular I would list it a unsupportable/fundamentally broken.

FWIW I've installed Ubuntu Precise x86 in a VM, and apart from being incredibly painful to interact with (partly because of its broken VirtualBox support, partly unity, etc), no sign of this bug yet (and I'm not going to be using this much longer to find out).

[Antoine Martin]

As per comment:8, I've tried very hard to make Ubuntu behave but it is hopeless. Even when using a regular gnome desktop, the gtk.StatusIcon simply does not show up (no warnings, no errors... sigh) and so we end up having to use appindicator (which clearly has problems).