[winswitch] Xpra has side effects on Cinnamon

[Antoine Martin]

On 04/07/2020 23:18, develop_at_Sophtwearteam via shifter-users wrote:
> Hello Everyone,
> 
> Does anyone has faced issues with cinnamon desktop environment?
What a coincidence, a cinnamon packaging bug was fixed just today:
https://www.xpra.org/trac/ticket/2820
But this only affected CentOS 7 users.

> As a
> member of a Linux User Group we had recently some nasty experiences
> while examining Xpra and it's functions.
> 
> One has Linux Mint installed on his machine with Cinnamon desktop
> (details at the bottom) and another installation is mine:
> System:
>   Kernel: 5.7.6-201.fc32.x86_64 x86_64 bits: 64 Desktop: Cinnamon 4.6.5
>   Distro: Fedora release 32 (Thirty Two)
> Machine:
>   Type: Laptop System: LENOVO product: 20FB006BGE v: ThinkPad X1 Carbon 4th
> Graphics:
>   Device-1: Intel Skylake GT2 [HD Graphics 520] driver: i915 v: kernel
>   Device-2: Chicony Integrated Camera type: USB driver: uvcvideo
>   Display: x11 server: Fedora Project X.org 1.20.8 driver: modesetting
>   unloaded: fbdev,vesa resolution: 2560x1440~60Hz
>   OpenGL: renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 520 (SKL GT2) v: 4.6 Mesa 20.1.2
> 
> Issue here was: After reopening the lid of the laptop and resume from
> suspend, the login screen was not showing the password field, but a kind
> of desktop without any functionality. By entering the password as usual
> ('blind' in this case, because it wasn't shown because of missing
> password entry field) and hitting the ENTER button, the login succeeded
> and the desktop was still usable as expected.
xpra does not interfere with the normal X11 desktop that I assume you
are running since you are using cinnamon.

None of its components are loaded into your current X11 server by
default: the xpra server runs using its own dedicated display which is
completely dissociated from the rest, and when you run the xpra client
it will use the X11 display just like any other client application would.

One possibility here is that your OpenGL drivers are so buggy that they
somehow corrupt the display. This would be a first, but it is not
impossible, especially with the Intel driver:
https://xpra.org/trac/wiki/ClientRendering/OpenGL#IntelDriverIssues
You can try running with OpenGL disabled: --opengl=no

> After removing Xpra from the system, everything was back to normal.
> 
> The case of my friend with his Mint machine was way worse. After Xpra
> not reacting anymore,
What does this mean? The xpra client stopped working?

> he decided to remove (purge) the software from his
> system. Then he did a reboot of his machine and ran into rescue mode
> with no Xwindow / Xorg working anymore. After reinstalling the Xwindow /
> Xorg packages and reboot he could relogin graphically. Back to business.
This sounds like Xorg packages were removed when they should not be.
Removing xpra should never remove any system packages, and I don't see
how it would end up doing that.
Perhaps this is related to the HWE Xorg packaging mess that Ubuntu
created, more details here:
https://www.xpra.org/trac/ticket/2190

Note: the xpra.org packages are for Ubuntu, Mint is not explicitly
supported - though it should work.

> Two other guys with opensuse Tumbleweed installations and KDE had also
> some minor issues. One couldn't start the Xpra program at all after
> installation and had some updates left. The other one didn't get the
> clue, so this might be another problem.
opensuse is not supported by xpra.org

> All installations came from the repositories of their distributions. No
> foreign repos where used.
It's not 100% clear to me if you are using packages from xpra.org or
from your distribution.
FYI: downstream packages are known to cause all sorts of problems,
including some similar to the ones your describe:
https://www.xpra.org/trac/wiki/Packaging/DistributionPackages

> This led us to the conclusion not to install and run Xpra anymore.
That's unfortunate. If you haven't done so already, you may want to try
the packages from xpra.org, as no such extreme problems have ever been
reported with those.

> I would have had reported a bug, but after removing Xpra from the system
> and my riders did it as well, we cannot provide any useful data than
> mine here in the top of this mail.
> 
> Hope you can keep this in mind if anyone else report bugs similar to this.
Thanks for the heads up!
FYI: the Ubuntu packages are the worst, by far:
https://www.xpra.org/trac/wiki/Packaging/DistributionPackages/Ubuntu

If the Fedora packages had any problems anywhere near as bad as what you
describe, this would be fixed in very short order as I use Fedora daily.

Cheers,
Antoine

> 
> Have a nice day
> stippi
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