KDE Application Launcher Menu "disappearing"

[Axon]

Has anyone else noticed this behavior? Every once in a while, the KDE
Application Launcher Menu (AKA "start menu") will spontaneously
"disappear" after you click on it.

So, let's say you're trying to start Firefox in your 'work' AppVM. So
you click the "start button" and go to hover your cursor over "Domain:
work" and so forth. But as soon as you move your mouse (or even if you
just keep your mouse still), the whole menu disappears! You can try this
as many times as you want, but unless you have superhuman speed, odds
are you cannot navigate to and click your desired button before the menu
disappears out from under you. Needless to say, this is extremely
annoying. (If it were happening on a regular Windows machine, I would
think some script kiddie was playing a prank on me.)

After some random period of time (minutes), this behavior goes away on
its own for no apparent reason.

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

Is it happening just after you shut down some template or standalone VM? There
is a time where icons are generated (for all VM applications, so it takes some
time) and perhaps KDE is reloading configuration once notices updated file.

--
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?

[Axon]

Marek Marczykowski-Górecki:

> On 27.07.2014 03:54, Axon wrote:
>> Has anyone else noticed this behavior? Every once in a while, the KDE
>> Application Launcher Menu (AKA "start menu") will spontaneously
>> "disappear" after you click on it.
>>
>> So, let's say you're trying to start Firefox in your 'work' AppVM. So
>> you click the "start button" and go to hover your cursor over "Domain:
>> work" and so forth. But as soon as you move your mouse (or even if you
>> just keep your mouse still), the whole menu disappears! You can try this
>> as many times as you want, but unless you have superhuman speed, odds
>> are you cannot navigate to and click your desired button before the menu
>> disappears out from under you. Needless to say, this is extremely
>> annoying. (If it were happening on a regular Windows machine, I would
>> think some script kiddie was playing a prank on me.)
>>
>> After some random period of time (minutes), this behavior goes away on
>> its own for no apparent reason.
>
> Is it happening just after you shut down some template or standalone VM? There
> is a time where icons are generated (for all VM applications, so it takes some
> time) and perhaps KDE is reloading configuration once notices updated file.
>

Hm, could be. I'll watch for this the next time it happens.

[Alex]

Yes, I see this behaviour and it's maddening because it makes it impossible to launch stuff. My kludge has been putting the laptop to sleep and then hoping that the issue is gone on awakening. Can't figure out how to reproduce, sorry.

[Vincent Penquerc'h]

On 28/07/14 12:35, Alex wrote:
> Is it happening just after you shut down some template or
> standalone VM? There
> is a time where icons are generated (for all VM applications, so
> it takes some
> time) and perhaps KDE is reloading configuration once notices
> updated file.

I've seen that when I change settings for an AppVM. I can't be more
precise than that for now, but I assumed it was cancelling the menu as
it was modifying files that menu relied on, so I just wait a bit for it
to settle down. It usually isn't very long (a couple dozen seconds ?)
though I've seen it once for more than a couple minutes. At the time I
thought X or my keyboard or mouse had a hardware problem emitting
spurious events :D

[Zrubecz Laszlo]

I saw such behaviour when the system tray notifications are appears.

I don't know the relations between the kde menu and the system tray
notifications, but if I open the KDE menu and hower the mouse over an
element, then any kind of tray notifications appear the KDE menu
disappears...



--
Zrubi

[Axon]

Axon:

Yes, it seems to correlate with TemplateVM shutdowns (but this is just a
subjective impression).

[Rainier Wolfcastle]

I also was having this problem but it only occurred when I had turned off "Show windows from all monitors" for the Window Buttons of a specific panel.

I have not been able to track down why this happens. I'm using XFCE as my desktop environment.

[cprise]

On 08/05/14 03:38, Axon wrote:
> Yes, it seems to correlate with TemplateVM shutdowns (but this is just
> a subjective impression).

I got the same impression. Let me test it right now......

...OK. Its definitely triggered by the yum update. I used the GUI this
time, but wouldn't be surprised if running yum directly had the same effect.

The menu starts disappearing /before/ I shutdown the template. This was
the second time I ran the template; The first time I only ran a terminal
then shutdown, but the menu kept working correctly so I decided to try
again with an update.

More strangeness:

After I switched desktops to type some sentences here, the menu started
working properly again, on all desktops. So I did another update on a
different template and the menu problem returned. Typing some words into
Thunderbird's composition window removed the problem again.

I would say that shutting down a template, by itself, has nothing to do
with the menu disappearing. Its the update, or something the update does.

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

Yes, update inside of template triggers application icons recreation. Which
takes a while... You can observe it on dom0 CPU load. We will think about some
way to not disturb menu usability during this operation, but this is rather
low priority problem, so most likely after final R2 release as an update.

https://wiki.qubes-os.org/ticket/886