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Problems at use | Problèmes à l'utilisation

Subjects Author Language Messages Last message
[Locked] Cairo dock black rectangle
Guest English 17 fabounet [Read]
06 July 2009 à 16:20

Guest, Tuesday 30 June 2009 à 12:27

Hello I've the same problem of others, but for me there seems not to be any solution...
I've a black rectangle behind my dock, compiz is enabled and working good. This black rectangle appears in both opengl and non opengl mode. I've ubuntu jaunty, and the 2.0.6 version of the cairo-dock. The 1.6.3.1 version didn't have this problem.
What I can do? Thanks a lot!

Guest, Tuesday 30 June 2009 à 12:28

I forgot to put the title of the topic... Can a moderator modify it in "Cairo dock black rectangle"? Thanks a lot

nochka85, Tuesday 30 June 2009 à 12:35


Subscription date : 29 November 2007
Messages : 7408
Which graphic card and which driver ?

matttbe, Tuesday 30 June 2009 à 13:52


Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 12573
This black rectangle appears in both opengl and non opengl mode

Strange !

Do you see all points of this page : Recurrent problems

Can you say what's your desktop environment (Gnome, Kde, XFCE, ...) and your windows manager ?

fabounet, Tuesday 30 June 2009 à 16:18


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
launch it directly with cairo-dock -c

Guest, Wednesday 01 July 2009 à 16:45

Thanks for the answers! With the command cairo-dock -c it works ok!
It's strange because on my eee900 in jaunty, where is the first time I installed it, it works ok also without doing cairo-dock -c but only pressing no to the question about the opengl.
On my desktop with jaunty, and on my eee with intrepid, where I had the old version, the rectangle appears! It disappears only doing the -c command.
But in the eee with jaunty it uses 40% cpu at max, in intrepid (with -c) it uses 80% cpu at max!
This is really strange!

matttbe, Wednesday 01 July 2009 à 17:14


Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 12573
Yes, Strange ! it's maybe a bug with your theme or a bug with dependences, etc.
No problem on Karmic or Jaunty for me !

Guest, Wednesday 01 July 2009 à 19:46

But what I can do to remove it completely, to reinstall it again? Some settings are retained also after a "remove completely" from synaptic...
Are there some configuration files around the file system? I've found them in the .config folder, but removing them didn't stop the black rectangle in the next installation! There must be something related to compiz somewhere...

matttbe, Wednesday 01 July 2009 à 20:09


Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 12573
Your theme is in ~/.config/cairo-dock/current_theme/
The repertory of the installation is in /usr/share/cairo-dock/

If you want to remove Cairo-Dock completely, you can purge the deb packages
sudo apt-get purge cairo-dock*
(to remove cairo-dock, cairo-dock-plug-ins and maybe cairo-dock-themes)

And you can delete these two repertories (but save your theme in a other repertory before ) :
sudo rm -R /usr/share/cairo-dock/
rm -R ~/.config/cairo-dock/current_theme/


Guest :
but removing them didn't stop the black rectangle in the next installation
If you have a black rectangle, launch cairo-dock with this command "cairo-dock -c". If you have this bug again see the wiki : Recurrent problems

Guest, Wednesday 01 July 2009 à 23:44

Thanks a lot for your answers! With cairo-dock -c, it works ok!
There is one little thing that is driving me mad... I've in the same pc both ubuntu intrepid and jaunty...
In intrepid when I move fast the mouse over the dock, the CPU arrives at 80% of usage.
In jaunty in the same condition, the CPU never goes up 40% usage.
What is reducing the CPU load in jaunty? First I've thought that was the opengl, but they weren't because this happens also with "cairo-dock -c".
This sounds like a little mistery!


matttbe, Thursday 02 July 2009 à 00:48


Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 12573
With the same version, the same theme, the same conditions (with Compiz, without other apps,...) and the same architecture ?
Maybe a bug with the libcairo or other... I think that I have never heard this difference between Intrepid and Jaunty but ...

Mav, Thursday 02 July 2009 à 06:33


Subscription date : 29 November 2007
Messages : 3146
I noticed that too but not in a proper way.
When we released the first 2.0 version with fab, I tried cairo-dock -c and I mentionned to Fab that the cpu usage has been decreased a lot
On my intrepid system, I could have gone up to a core used, with the 2.0, maximum was 23% (2-3 min tests)

fabounet, Thursday 02 July 2009 à 11:44


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
some big improvment in libcairo I guess.

Guest, Thursday 02 July 2009 à 18:47

Yes with the same system and the same configuration! In intrepid, also disabling compiz (for test) drop down the cpu-usage!!
It's strange and maybe it has something to do with the libcairo. But is there a way to try to have this kind of usage also in intrepid?

matttbe, Thursday 02 July 2009 à 19:21


Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 12573
But is there a way to try to have this kind of usage also in intrepid?
Update this lib or switch to Jaunty Or change your repositories list from intrepid to jaunty, update this lib and switch again...
(or report this bug in launchpad )

Guest, Friday 03 July 2009 à 21:20

I can't find any way to upgrade this lib! What repositories I have to change to the jaunty one? The cairo-dock repo or the distro repo?
Thanks a lot for the answers!

matttbe, Monday 06 July 2009 à 15:40


Subscription date : 24 January 2009
Messages : 12573
The libcairo2 is in Ubuntu repositories.
If you want to update this lib:
  • change the name of all repositories (from intrepid to jaunty) on your /etc/apt/sources.list
  • update this lib :
    sudo apt-get install libcairo2
  • change the name of all repositories again (from jaunty to intrepid)

fabounet, Monday 06 July 2009 à 16:20


Subscription date : 30 November 2007
Messages : 17118
I would personnaly upgrade the whole distrib
libcairo is a core library, so you're taking a risk doing that
or possibly, install it by compiling it to /usr/local

Problems at use | Problèmes à l'utilisation

Subjects Author Language Messages Last message
[Locked] Cairo dock black rectangle
Guest English 17 fabounet [Read]
06 July 2009 à 16:20


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