Bug#698740: gnome-applets: Force-Quit applet freezes/crashes, refuses to recognize mouse clicks or escape key

[Avery Payne]

Package: gnome-applets
Version: 3.4.1-3
Severity: grave
Justification: causes non-serious data loss

Dear Maintainer,

The Force-Quit applet for Gnome 3 creates a serious usability issue.  After
attaching the applet to a panel, attempting to use it will start the applet and
show the overlay window.  The window states that the user should click on the
window they want to quit, or press escape to abort this process.  While the
pointer on the screen will change as part of this, clicking on any window does
NOT close the application.  In fact, it appears that all mouse click events are
simply "eaten" and the mouse effective does nothing from that point forward.
Just as a side note, I also attempted to click the application entry in the
bottom panel, just to be sure there wasn't some hidden UI option that might
work as well.  Pressing Escape to end the process doesn't work either.  I have
tried this option twice, and each time, the only way to "unlock" the session
was to literally abort it by restarting the display manager.  While this does
not affect the system in a critical way, it does affect the user's session, and
I can easily see where it could lead to data loss because the X session was
dumped, in turn causing all programs to be killed with it.  I have also
attempted to see if the program could be killed by switching to a console and
doing a ps aux | grep "myusername", but I have not had much luck in locating
the application - it implies that the applet may be crashing (or simply running
under a different account).

At the very least, the applet should respond to the escape key to allow the
user to exit back to their session, rather than creating a situation where the
mouse pointer is completely ineffective.  While this does not address the
primary function of the applet (to force-quit another application) it at least
functions as a fail-safe in a case where the software could fail, allowing the
user to get out of a potentially bad situation.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: 7.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages gnome-applets depends on:
ii  gconf-service                    3.2.5-1+build1
ii  gconf2                           3.2.5-1+build1
ii  gir1.2-gconf-2.0                 3.2.5-1+build1
ii  gir1.2-gdkpixbuf-2.0             2.26.1-1
ii  gir1.2-gtk-3.0                   3.4.2-5
ii  gir1.2-panelapplet-4.0           3.4.2.1-3
ii  gnome-applets-data               3.4.1-3
ii  gnome-icon-theme                 3.4.0-2
ii  gnome-panel                      3.4.2.1-3
ii  gvfs                             1.12.3-3
ii  libatk1.0-0                      2.4.0-2
ii  libc6                            2.13-37
ii  libcairo2                        1.12.2-2
ii  libcpufreq0                      008-1
ii  libdbus-1-3                      1.6.8-1
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2                 0.100-1
ii  libgconf-2-4                     3.2.5-1+build1
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0               2.26.1-1
ii  libglib2.0-0                     2.33.12+really2.32.4-3
ii  libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0  0.10.36-1
ii  libgstreamer0.10-0               0.10.36-1
ii  libgtk-3-0                       3.4.2-5
ii  libgtop2-7                       2.28.4-3
ii  libgucharmap-2-90-7              1:3.4.1.1-2.1
ii  libgweather-3-0                  3.4.1-1+build1
ii  libnotify4                       0.7.5-1
ii  libpanel-applet-4-0              3.4.2.1-3
ii  libpango1.0-0                    1.30.0-1
ii  libpolkit-gobject-1-0            0.105-3
ii  libupower-glib1                  0.9.17-1
ii  libwnck-3-0                      3.4.2-1
ii  libx11-6                         2:1.5.0-1
ii  libxml2                          2.8.0+dfsg1-7
ii  python                           2.7.3~rc2-1
ii  python-gi                        3.2.2-1
ii  upower                           0.9.17-1

Versions of packages gnome-applets recommends:
ii  gnome-media               3.4.0-1
ii  gnome-system-monitor      3.4.1-2+b1
ii  gstreamer0.10-pulseaudio  0.10.31-3+nmu1
ii  policykit-1-gnome         0.105-2

Versions of packages gnome-applets suggests:
ii  tomboy  1.10.0-2

-- no debconf information