[winswitch] Unable to start multiple gnome-terminals

[Douglas Doole]

Splitting this discussion off from the "No menu bar in Ubuntu" thread.

On Thu, Jan 19, 2017 at 5:40 AM Antoine Martin <antoine at nagafix.co.uk>
wrote:
> > My general model is that I have xpra running, and then I create and

In case it matters, I start xpra with:
   xpra start :10 --start-new-commands=yes

> > dispose of terminal windows as needed. Then I run commands as needed
> > from the terminal.
> >
> > I had been using "DISPLAY=:10 gnome-terminal" and had the menu bar
problem.
> >
> > Since xpra is already running, I can't use "xpra start --start=...", so
> > I used "xpra control :10 start gnome-terminal". This gives me a terminal
> > window with a menu bar. Any commands I start from the terminal (gvim,
> > eclipse) also have their menu bar. Yay!
> Right. Can we close this thread and start a new one?
> (or at least rename the thread)
>
> > But when I try to start a second terminal using "xpra control :10 start
> > gnome-terminal", xpra hangs. I get the title bar and border for the
> > second window, but its contents are black. All existing windows stop
> > responding to input. (Even the close button in the title bar is
> > non-responsive.) The xpra icon in the systray changes from an X to the
> > clipboard icon. (The systray icon responds normally.) Running "xpra
> > list" shows a LIVE session. If I disconnect the client, the server still
> > reports a LIVE session. However as soon as I try to reconnect the client
> > the server reports it as DEAD (cleaned up). (The session is not fully
> > cleaned up though - there are still 6 xpra related processes running,
> > including "xpra start" and Xorg-for-Xpra". Manually killing the
> > Xorg-for-Xpra process cleans everything up.)
> >
> > Any idea on this one?
> Yes, unfortunately.
>
> Many applications have started refusing to launch new instances when you
> execute them.
> This started with browsers, but it is now affecting other types of
> applications. (KDE and many recent gnome applications suffer from this)
> Instead of starting a new instance, they try to show a new window -
> still belonging to the first process that was started.

I think you nailed it there. If I start gnome-terminal with the
--disable-factory option, each instance is spawned as a separate process
and don't get the hang.

> Now, although this can cause the application to misbehave, it should not
> be able to crash the xpra server. Unfortunately, clipboard misbehaviour
> is an issue that is known to cause this sort of problems.
> I'll try to reproduce, having a ticket with details wouldn't hurt.

I'll open a ticket shortly.

> > In the short term, I can just create my first window using xpra control
> > start and then spawn new terminals from that. However my preferred way
> > to work is to have a terminal icon in the launcher that I click to spawn
> > a new terminal in xpra.
> Not sure I understand this part.

Don't worry about this. I can work around my concern with --disable-factory.