Cinnamon panel / task bar becomes unresponsive to mouse (3.2.1)

[ase1590]

I'm not sure yet what exactly causes it, but every few minutes my Cinnamon panel / task bar becomes unresponsive to mouse clicks.
I then can no longer click the Cinnamon menu icon or interact with anything related to the task bar with my mouse. I can only open the cinnamon menu by pressing the Super key. if I close out of all existing windows, cinnamon will start to work normally again and I can interact with cinnamon fine.

[ase1590]

running cinnamon --replace in terminal window, I am greeted with the following errors:

/usr/lib/blueberry/blueberry-tray.py:5: PyGIWarning: Gtk was imported without specifying a version first. Use gi.require_version('Gtk', '3.0') before import t
  from gi.repository import Gtk, Gdk, GnomeBluetooth, Gio
/usr/lib/blueberry/blueberry-tray.py:5: PyGIWarning: GnomeBluetooth was imported without specifying a version first. Use gi.require_version('GnomeBluetooth', 
  from gi.repository import Gtk, Gdk, GnomeBluetooth, Gio
Can't open RFKILL control device: No such file or directory
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: About to start Cinnamon
St-Message: cogl npot texture sizes SUPPORTED
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: Cinnamon started at Sat Nov 19 2016 20:05:04 GMT-0600 (CST)

(cinnamon:785): Gtk-WARNING **: Could not load a pixbuf from icon theme.
This may indicate that pixbuf loaders or the mime database could not be found.

(cinnamon:785): St-CRITICAL **: st_drawing_area_get_surface_size: assertion 'area->priv->in_repaint' failed
Cjs-Message: JS WARNING: [/home/ase1590/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/hwmonitor@sylfurd/applet.js 118]: assignment to undeclared variable i

(cinnamon:785): St-CRITICAL **: st_drawing_area_get_surface_size: assertion 'area->priv->in_repaint' failed
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: network applet: Cannot find connection for active (or connection cannot be read)

(cinnamon:785): Clutter-WARNING **: Attempting to remove actor of type 'StLabel' from group of class 'CinnamonGenericContainer', but the container is not the 
openGL version 4.3 detected (GL3 Cogl Driver)
MetaSyncRing disabled: couldn't find required GL extensions, or the minimum safe openGL version was not met
failed to create drawable
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: Invalid network device type, is 14
Cjs-Message: JS LOG: network applet: Found connection for active

(nemo:799): Gtk-WARNING **: Allocating size to NemoWindowPane 0x2b09410 without calling gtk_widget_get_preferred_width/height(). How does the code know the si
Cjs-Message: JS WARNING: [/home/ase1590/.local/share/cinnamon/applets/hwmonitor@sylfurd/applet.js 95]: assignment to undeclared variable index
[959:959:1119/200509:ERROR:background_mode_manager_aura.cc(13)] Not implemented reached in virtual void BackgroundModeManager::EnableLaunchOnStartup(bool)
[1058:1058:1119/200510:ERROR:sandbox_linux.cc(343)] InitializeSandbox() called with multiple threads in process gpu-process. 

(cinnamon:785): Cjs-WARNING **: JS ERROR: Error: can't convert NaN to an integer
Chrome.prototype.updateRegions@/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/layout.js:706


(cinnamon:785): Cjs-WARNING **: JS ERROR: Error: can't convert NaN to an integer
Chrome.prototype.updateRegions@/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/layout.js:706
LayoutManager.prototype._windowsRestacked@/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/layout.js:105


(cinnamon:785): Cjs-WARNING **: JS ERROR: Error: can't convert NaN to an integer
Chrome.prototype.updateRegions@/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/layout.js:706

[ase1590]

Okay, I've found reproducible steps.

1. open up some program
2. right click the title bar to get the maximize/minimize/close menu
3. close out the right click menu
4. The Cinnamon task panel is now unresponsive to left mouse button clicks until all other windows are closed

Curiously, if I try to right click the task bar, it instead shows me the same right click menu that I would get for the desktop. I have my Cinnamon task bar on the top edge of my screen. Perhaps the desktop is drawing over the top of the task bar?

[leigh123linux]

Remove hwmonitor and any other spice applets and see if the issue still reproduces.

[morph027]

Reverted to default settings, removed all other applets and keep watching ;)

[dominichayesferen]

It happens over here on 3.2 from the starting of Cinnamon and never ends... Applets are still responsive and their menus are usable, but the panel is completely click-through...

[dominichayesferen]

@leigh123linux I reset the panel applets to the fresh Linux Mint defaults, and that didn't help a single bit...

[FistfulOfStars]

Resetting all panel applets and restarting cinnamon seems to correct the issue for me.

Will be re-adding applets one by one until I find a potential offender.

[morph027]

Probably a faulty one i was using ;)
jake-phy/WindowIconList#172

Running smooth since i've cleared all spices.

[dominichayesferen]

Shall we have a clearing of some Spices then that won't work on Cinnamon anymore with 3.2's release?

[dominichayesferen]

@leigh123linux Ok, turns out you have to restart Cinnamon to unbrick the panel once WindowListWithAppGrouping is removed...

[ase1590]

@leigh123linux I can also confirm that removing the WindowListWithAppGrouping fixes the issue.

people may instead consider using icing task manager, which is in actively maintained fork of the same program and has the fixes for the issue already.

[JosephMcc]

Closing this since the issue seems to be causes by third party applet/s

[maedox]

The fact that a crash like this is possible seems like a bug to me, so shouldn't that be fixed instead of closing the issue?

[dominichayesferen]

@JosephMcc I think a clearing of outdated/non-functional/bricking applets is in order on Cinnamon Spices then...

[leigh123linux]

@maedox It's down to the third-party applets maintainers to fix them as there not part of the linuxmint cinnamon code.

[JosephMcc]

@maedox It doesn't crash. Applets are allowed to do quite a lot in Cinnamon and that can lead to this sort of thing happening. There are some things in place that will disable a bad applet but I'm not sure how much we can actually do given the amount of flexibility is allowed.

@feren We have been talking about exactly that. Something will likely happen once things settle down from Mint18.2.

[dominichayesferen]

@JosephMcc Good, I hope it happens, otherwise, new users will probably be confused when some applets don't work, it'll also mean there's more fresh applets available on the Spices repos.
BTW, ones I know still work include:

• slingshot@jfarthing84 (no Vertical Panel support)
• weather@mockturtl
• MessagingMenuV3@blub
• show-hide-applets@mohammad-sn
• ScreenShot+RecordDesktop@tech71
• search@bownz (Other applets of its kind are not working)
• window-buttons-with-title@fmete
• globalAppMenu@lestcape (Not sure if this one's in the repos, it's definetely on Git)
• stopwatch@pdcurtis