Bug#819610: mate-panel hangs with 100% CPU on restart with specific layout

[Jephte CLAIN]

Package: mate-panel
Version: 1.8.1+dfsg1-3
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

When I change the layout to put the bottom panel to the top (such that there is
2 panels at the top), everything works fine until I restart the session. Then
the screen is empty with a flickering blank panel at the top. Switching to the
console, I can see that mate-panel is eating 100% CPU and eventually dies
because of out of memory condition.

This is 100% reproducible. I have to reset the panel to be able to login again:
    DISPLAY=:0.0
    mate-panel --reset
    sudo service lightdm restart

I have searched on internet, and several people have the same problem, but I
can't find any bug report, so there it is.

This is annoying. I just upgraded from squeeze that I have run for several
years, and I would like to put the two panels to the top like I'm used to.

I have not tested if the problem is still there with more recent versions of
mate-panel. Even if it was fixed in a later version, I cannot afford to run
anything but debian stable.

I'm willing to help by testing any fix. Thank you for your help. 
Best regards,
Jephte Clain


-- System Information:
Debian Release: 8.3
  APT prefers stable-updates
  APT policy: (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 3.16.0-4-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=fr_FR.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages mate-panel depends on:
ii  dconf-gsettings-backend [gsettings-backend]  0.22.0-1
ii  libatk1.0-0                                  2.14.0-1
ii  libc6                                        2.19-18+deb8u3
ii  libcairo2                                    1.14.0-2.1
ii  libcanberra-gtk0                             0.30-2.1
ii  libcanberra0                                 0.30-2.1
ii  libdbus-1-3                                  1.8.20-0+deb8u1
ii  libdbus-glib-1-2                             0.102-1
ii  libdconf1                                    0.22.0-1
ii  libfontconfig1                               2.11.0-6.3
ii  libfreetype6                                 2.5.2-3+deb8u1
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0                           2.31.1-2+deb8u4
ii  libglib2.0-0                                 2.42.1-1
ii  libgtk2.0-0                                  2.24.25-3
ii  libice6                                      2:1.0.9-1+b1
ii  libmate-desktop-2-17                         1.8.1+dfsg1-3+deb8u1
ii  libmate-menu2                                1.8.0-5
ii  libmate-panel-applet-4-1                     1.8.1+dfsg1-3
ii  libmateweather1                              1.8.0-2
ii  libpango-1.0-0                               1.36.8-3
ii  libpangocairo-1.0-0                          1.36.8-3
ii  libpangoft2-1.0-0                            1.36.8-3
ii  librsvg2-2                                   2.40.5-1
ii  libsm6                                       2:1.2.2-1+b1
ii  libstartup-notification0                     0.12-4
ii  libwnck22                                    2.30.7-2
ii  libx11-6                                     2:1.6.2-3
ii  libxau6                                      1:1.0.8-1
ii  libxrandr2                                   2:1.4.2-1+b1
ii  mate-desktop                                 1.8.1+dfsg1-3+deb8u1
ii  mate-menus                                   1.8.0-5
ii  mate-panel-common                            1.8.1+dfsg1-3
ii  mate-polkit                                  1.8.0+dfsg1-4
ii  menu-xdg                                     0.5
ii  python                                       2.7.9-1

mate-panel recommends no packages.

mate-panel suggests no packages.

-- no debconf information