Hi there. I´ve been using Ubuntu Mate for a couple of weeks now and so far it was amazing OS. I upgraded from 15.04 to 15.10 without any issues and it was supper smooth until today. During my daily work I opened PDF with Atril, then the whole desktop crashed showing only my wallpaper, when it came back I couldnt click on anything and in the bottom panel I saw multiple instances of Caja trying to do something. When I fallback to console it was periodically listing segfaults for Caja (error 6 in libc). I rebooted the computer and after login I could see only my wallpaper, no icons or panels whatsoever. I logged in into the guest account which worked fine. I thought … maybe something got corrupted in my profile, so I deleted the dconf settings and tried to set things back they used to. Only to run into this error again… and again, like dozen times already. It happens when I switch from Marco to Compiz. It happens when I change theme from Ambiance to Yuyo Dark. Oh yeah and I made sure it is not a profile issue. I performed a clean installation of 15.10 Wily only to run into this bug again. Plus everytime I want to edit anything in control panel and the password dialog shows up - I cannot write the password in, because it freezes once I hit the keyboard.
I need some serious help with this, because I´m at my wits ends. It was so stable before, and my work is piling up. Thanks for any help.
I tinkered with it a bit and after a couple of switches between marco and compiz it seems to work again. I guess it was a Compiz thing
Anyway can I download the default 15.04 compiz profile somewhere? I didn’t backup my old one because I didn’t know it changed so much for 15.10.
I had the same problem with Mate 15.10 on virtual machine. The system started and right away like 20 instances of caja were trying to open and the whole screen froze.
Then I gave it a try on physical machine and everything worked fine.
but since I’m an LTS user I have returned to the LTS version of mate
I almost thought it was just me
I nailed down the source of the issues. It is definitely tied to compiz, and the trigger is either Compiz crash, or the switching between Marco and Compiz, if I do that one or two times first I lose the window decorations and panels in Marco, when returning back to compiz the aforementioned bug rears its ugly head. Unless you delete the dconf the desktop is useless. I also tried to backup working dconf with Marco as a default window manager. However when the bug is triggered copying the working dconf doesn’t fix the issue, you get stuck on an empty background screen.
I also tried to restart compiz but with no luck. Tthe compiz --replace command returns compiz SIGSEGV error.
So the bottomline is I deleted the dconf, switched to compiz, and I’m trying not to touch anything related to desktop settings or appearance.
I’m having the same issue with Compiz on both an upgrade and a clean install of 15.10. For me it happens the moment I try switching to Compiz through MATE Tweak. I completely lose the window manager and all I have when I log in is my wallpaper.
I was able to get the desktop working again by deleting ~/.config/dconf/user but now Chrome and Dropbox won’t load…
Well sometimes just deleting the dconf is not enough. When I do that the desktop starts using Marco, but in a kind of buggy state. For example whenever an application requires elevated privilege and a dialog with password shows up you cannot enter it, because the moment you push a key on the keyboard it locks up and crashes. If this happened to you too I found the solution. First delete the dconf and reboot. The open Mate Tweak, switch to compiz - it usually screws up the desktop. Then click the button to revert to compiz default. Then switch back to Marco. Then go to tty1 with Ctrl+Alt+F1 and enter marco --replace or in my case DISPLAY=:0.0 marco --replace Reboot and after that you should be able to either keep marco or switch to compiz with the Mate Tweak without issues. It took me like 2 days to figure this out. Before switching to compiz it is wise to change compiz settings with CCSM, or load a profile. If you try it later with compiz on it is prone to crashing and locking up the desktop again, so you would have to go trough all this again. Also the profile function of compiz is buggy as hell. Gave me a ton of headache. Some forum suggested installing compizconfig-backend-gconf though for wily it is stated it is a dummy package. I had to export profile from virtual 15.04 to get back settings I liked.
Yeah and when you get it working don’t ever touch it again and don’t switch back to Marco.
Wow, thank you so much for that solution! It fixed the WM and totally resolved the other issues from just deleting dconf! Thankfully, I love the way MATE looks and Compiz prevents the shearing I was getting while scrolling through web pages with Marco so I’m with you and just not going to touch this setting again. Hopefully it’s resolved by the next LTS release.
I’m sorry, i have the same problem with mate 15.10.
I’ve tried to switch to compiz only for see what it was, but a lot of caja opened. I pressed “restart compiz” and then switched to Marco. But it was too late, and the only-wallpaper problem appeared.
I wish to fix it without reinstalling the OS, since i wish not to loose my files.
Is there a way to fix it or i have to find some way to take my files before reinstall?
I don’t know how to delete the dconf file, since i cannot do anything in the wallpaper issue.
Thank you,
Luca
Hello Luca. If your desktop is broken as you say you have to use the text mode by using Ctrl+Alt+F1. You can switch to GUI by Ctrl+Alt+F7 anytime. Now when you press the shorcut log in and you can start fixing things. I suggest installing midnight commander
sudo apt-get install mc
It makes navigating and file operations much easier. Run the midnight commander.
sudo mc
Then navigate into your profile and the into .config folder. You will se the dconf in there. Navigate on it and use F8 to delete it. Reboot and your desktop should be back, althought still a little bit broken. Try to do the steps I wrote in the post above.
Thank you so much for your reply. That worked for me!
Anyway i think i’ve broken something, because only a few apps can be launched (even the terminal doesn’t work). So i’ve took all my files and i’m reinstalling the whole OS. Thank you,
Luca
I don´t think the reinstallation is necessary. Eventually you might run into this problem again. Please read again through this post. There you can find what to do to make your desktop work again. Anyway if you are determined to reinstall the system I suggest installing 15.04 or LTS version 14.04 for better stability.
Btw. What is your graphic card, dou you have AMD/ATi?
No i have a Nvidia Geforce (I have a Sony VAIO S).
Anyway i’ve installed Lubuntu for the moment, maybe i will retry MATE later.
I think that the problem have appeared because of Compiz, since all was working well before that try So i don’t think i will run into this problem again if i don’t try tu use Compiz!
This same thing happened to me. I deleted the dconf file and voila! I have yet to find any problems with compiz since. I will reply if I find any. For now I’m just glad I didn’t do any perminant damage.
Just to add my experience, I’m seeing the exact same problem on my system. So far, the Compiz crash only rears it’s head once I reboot the system. Typically I just get a black “X” for my cursor to start and I can get into MATE Tweak and reset Compiz before anything worse develops. Running Ubuntu-MATE 15.10 on 11-inch 2012 MacBook Air.
Now I know it’s a bug. I’m not sure if I should report it somewhere. Ubuntu Mate launchpad perhaps?
So i don’t think i will run into this problem again if i don’t try tu use Compiz!