No GTK theme applied on login, should be Ambiance

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Here's what the desktop looks like when this bug happens.

Logged out, logged in again. Now the theme is correct.

seems gnome-settings-daemon died.

Thank you for your bug report, could you add your .xsession-errors to the bug?

sorry... I'll se if the .xsessions is in the backup I just made...
had to format hard drive...
reinstalling 11.10 didn't work computer failed to boot, managed to boot with cd and copy home folder to external drive. just reinstalled everything...
For what I gathered error was form compizsettingsmanager, not installing it this time, let's see how long I can survive without wobbly windows...
Would like to reduce icon size for unity though, or maybe I'll give gnome shell a try

n

Sadly, logging out and in again to work around this problem also seems to start a new .xsession-errors.

Will have to wait and see how long before the bug happens again, then grab .xsession-errors.

Reproducing the bug was easier than I expected. Just had to log out and in a few times.

xsession-errors does show some gnome-settings-daemon errors when the bug occurred.

Reproduced the bug again after about 5 more attempts. The common factor when the bug occurs is this message:

(gnome-settings-daemon:2108): Gdk-WARNING **: The program 'gnome-settings-daemon' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)'.
  (Details: serial 1265 error_code 8 request_code 3 minor_code 0)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

This bug seems to be a dupe of bug #859723.

There's not enough evidence this is the same as bug 859723.

In that bug, the theme is lost some time after logging in, and the error is "error_code 3 request_code 18 minor_code 0".

In this bug, the theme is lost before logging in, and the error is "error_code 8 request_code 3 minor_code 0"

same problem on fresh install no compiz installed, here is the .xsession-errors

Running X session wrapper
Loading profile from /etc/profile
Loading profile from /home/nico/.profile
Loading resource: /etc/X11/Xresources/x11-common
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/20x11-common_process-args
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/30x11-common_xresources
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/40x11-common_xsessionrc
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50_check_unity_support
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/50x11-common_determine-startup
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/52libcanberra-gtk3-module_add-to-gtk-modules
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/52libcanberra-gtk-module_add-to-gtk-modules
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/55gnome-session_gnomerc
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/60x11-common_localhost
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/60x11-common_xdg_path
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/60xdg-user-dirs-update
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/65compiz_profile-on-session
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/70gconfd_path-on-session
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/75dbus_dbus-launch
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80appmenu
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80appmenu-gtk3
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/80im-switch
Setting IM through im-switch for locale=en_US.
Start IM through /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/all_ALL linked to /etc/X11/xinit/xinput.d/default.
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90consolekit
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90qt-a11y
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/90x11-common_ssh-agent
Loading X session script /etc/X11/Xsession.d/99x11-common_start
GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL=/tmp/keyring-5pN3pS
GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL=/tmp/keyring-5pN3pS
GPG_AGENT_INFO=/tmp/keyring-5pN3pS/gpg:0:1
GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL=/tmp/keyring-5pN3pS
GNOME_KEYRING_CONTROL=/tmp/keyring-5pN3pS
GPG_AGENT_INFO=/tmp/keyring-5pN3pS/gpg:0:1
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/tmp/keyring-5pN3pS/ssh

(gnome-settings-daemon:2470): color-plugin-WARNING **: failed to get edid: unable to get EDID for output
Checking if settings need to be migrated ...no
Checking if internal files need to be migrated ...no
Backend : gconf
Integration : true
Profile : unity
Adding plugins
Skipping upgrade com.canonical.unity.unity.01.upgrade
Skipping upgrade com.canonical.unity.unity.02.upgrade
Initializing core options...done
common-plugin-Message: checking whether we have a device for 4: yes
common-plugin-Message: checking whether we have a device for 5: yes
common-plugin-Message: checking whether we have a device for 6: yes
common-plugin-Message: checking whether we have a device for 7: yes
common-plugin-Message: checking whether we have a device for 8: yes
common-plugin-Message: checking whether we have a device for 9: yes
common-plugin-Message: checking whether we have a device for 10: yes
common-plugin-Message: checking whether we have a device for 11: yes
common-plugin-Message: checking whether we have a device for 12: yes
common-plugin-Message: checking whether we have a device for 13: yes
commo...

GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: g_value_get_object: assertion `G_VALUE_HOLDS_OBJECT (value)' failed

WTF?!?!?!

maybe I should just switch to gnome shell!

Oh everything starts with window decorator disappearing along with unity all together Ctrl+Alt T does not bring the terminal up and if I open a folder its not responding...

Haven't even tried to install matlab, with all the X problems it usually has... I NEED TO WORK!!

damn...

The assertion is not relevant to this bug. xsession-errors is normally full of assertions from all sorts of apps. Switching to gnome-shell won't change that.

It's at least good to see you're getting the same error as myself and we're not dealing with different bugs...
error_code 8 request_code 3 minor_code 0

yes sure but will it make my system more stable... that's the question.

I'll try it out and let you know

and why is this bug's priority low? Seems to me it is a major usability issue, no?

You will find gnome-shell uses many of the same processes as Unity, including nautilus, so will share some of the bugs too.

Why Gnome/GTK developers can't look at .xsession-errors and eliminate all the bugs/warnings in their code before release I don't know... But that's the way it's always been in my many years of using Gnome desktops. The log has always shown some bugs and warnings are still present.

I agree that bugs like this significantly tarnish Ubuntu's image. However according to the guidelines, importance of Low seems to be about right:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Importance

I just found this bug report after experiencing the same problem in 11.04
Seeing that gnome-settings-daemon throws an error I tried killall gnome-settings-daemon and after a short pause, my expected theme reappeared. I didn't even have to log out.
Maybe this will help others until a fix is found.

Unmarked as duplicate. This is not a duplicate of bug 873545 because the circumstances and the X error codes are different.

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please try to obtain a backtrace following the instructions at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash and upload the backtrace (as an attachment) to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

I don't know if this may be helpful, but this issue appeared on my machine after the last gnome-accessibility-themes package update.

Reverting back to the previous version fixed it.

I haven't been able to reproduce the bug for over an hour so getting a breakpoint in is a bit difficult right now. But it appears the problem is likely a race condition whereby gnome-settings-daemon is starting slightly too quickly, expecting something else to be running already that isn't. This theory seems to be supported by the message:
    WARN 2011-10-25 14:07:02 glib.gdk <unknown>:0 gdk_xsettings_watch_cb(): Couldn't find window to unwatch
which is only seen in xsession-errors when the bug occurs.

@everyone: When you reproduce this bug next, could you please open a terminal and run:
    ps auxw > /tmp/pslist.txt
and attach the file pslist.txt to this bug?

Hmm, never mind. I reproduced the bug and generated pslist.txt. Found nothing different about the process order.

Now I realize my breakpoint can't work without installing a debug version of libgdk, because the all-important symbol is static :(

Still having this issue... every ~5-6 logins..

Any news?

plist.txt

[Expired for gnome-settings-daemon (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

Confirmed again. I still get this bug in oneiric. Usually after compiz has crashed or been killed, when I restart X (and compiz) it fails to restart with a theme. Then logging out and in again finally fixes it.