5

image showing messed up ubuntu gnome shell text

image showing messed up ubuntu gnome shell text

im facing this problem since recent upgrade, all texts related to gnome top panel,overlay and gnome shell get messed up, only few letters are displayed. just au[blank spaces for missing letters]s is being displayed for audacious in gnome search results. Whatever i type in the search bar get messy too.

i dont face this everytime i use ubuntu. the last time i faced the problem i ran software update and the problem got solved. It worked fine for a few days but i got the problem back.

text in applications are fine.

Improve this question
4
  • What recent upgrade? Are you still using 15.04? If so, your question is off topic here since we don't deal with versions that are no longer supported. If you mean that you upgraded from 15.04, please edit your question and clarify.
    – terdon
    Apr 11, 2016 at 16:23
  • sorry for the mistake,im using 15.10 and not 15.04
    – Sathkrith
    Apr 11, 2016 at 16:28
  • Welcome to Ask Ubuntu! ;-) Have you tried a fc-cache --force --system --verbose?
    – Fabby
    Apr 12, 2016 at 13:11
  • @Fabby tried using the command, doesnt work
    – Sathkrith
    Apr 17, 2016 at 16:31

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
3

I'm suffering the same issue and I'm debugging it. While I haven't found the root cause, I've found that the issue is in cogl's glyph cache for Pango. You can use a debugger to clear this cache. I'm going to detail the steps here, but I should warn you that this is a bit of an expert option.

Preparation you need to do once to make the workaround work:

sudo apt-get install gdb gnome-shell-dbg libclutter-1.0-dbg libcogl-pango20-dbg

Then whenever you run into the issue, clear the font cache by running the following command line:

sudo gdb -p `pgrep -u $USER -x gnome-shell` <<<"print /r _cogl_pango_renderer_clear_glyph_cache((CoglPangoRenderer*)(_cogl_pango_font_map_get_priv(clutter_context_get_pango_fontmap())->renderer))"

This works splendidly for me, but I should warn you that if this command goes awry for any reason, it may hang your system. If that happens, a reboot is the only thing that fixes it.

I'm going to investigate further what, exactly, is wrong with the glyph cache, and open a bug report upstream.

Hope that helps!

Explanation of the command line: the part between backticks finds the process id for gnome-shell. That is used to attach the debugger gdb to the process; you need to be root (sudo) to do that. The part between <<<" and " is the function call for clearing the glyph cache.

Improve this answer
1
0

I was facing a similar problem. To fix the issue, restart the gnome shell. Press Alt+F2, enter r, and press return/enter. I do not think this is a permanent solution, but it will get your text back.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .