Background grey even though set to image and image is displayed elsewhere

Another thing I have noticed is that when I log in I see the correct background for a few seconds until it is replaced with the grey.

This bug seems to have the same effects at least as Bug #1521676 so perhaps they are related in some way?

I pushed an update to the nautilus package (1:3.20.1-0ubuntu1~xenial2) today that I think fixes this bug.

Please update your packages and then restart all Nautilus instances (logging out and then back in is a good way to do this). Please report here whether this fixes your bug or not.

Although it wasn't needed here, in the future, please use ubuntu-bug to report bugs like this. In this case, you could have ran

ubuntu-bug nautilus

More information about that can be found at
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReportingBugs#Reporting_non-crash_hardware_and_desktop_application_bugs

@Jeremy,

Yes, after restarting all Nautilus instances (actually just killing it did the trick) the problem is solved. Though seemingly only affected the Adwaita GTK+ theme as changing it to the Numix one fixed the issue.

By the way, are you going to give the patch to upstream (the upstream report is linked) or was this something only affecting the Ubuntu nautilus for some reason?

I got the patch from upstream! :)

Ah! Glad all that is settled then!

After recently upgrading to the latest version of the numix-gtk-theme from the PPA I decided to switch to it, however up on doing so I triggered this issue. When I switched back to Adwaita however the issue went as well.

Now however, even after switching back to Adwaita, the issue still persists. It seemed to coincide with when I restarted Nautilus as it wasn't allow me to do anything with the desktop (this is another issue which I have reported).

So should this report be reopened or shall I file a new report?

I have now also noticed that if I am to end the Nautilus process, then my desktop background shows as it is meant to everywhere. But starting Nautilus again makes the desktop grey again.

If I end the Nautilus process and then start it from Terminal this is the output:

(nautilus:11557): Gtk-WARNING **: Failed to register client: GDBus.Error:org.gnome.SessionManager.AlreadyRegistered: Unable to register client
Initializing nautilus-dropbox 2015.10.28

(nautilus:11557): Gtk-WARNING **: Theme parsing error: <broken file>:1:0: Failed to import: The resource at '/org/gnome/libgd/tagged-entry/default.css' does not exist
Nautilus-Share-Message: Called "net usershare info" but it failed: 'net usershare' returned error 255: mkdir failed on directory /var/run/samba/msg.lock: Permission denied
net usershare: cannot open usershare directory /var/lib/samba/usershares. Error No such file or directory
Please ask your system administrator to enable user sharing.

Upstream have decided to reopen this bug and investigate further.

Upstream have released a fix for this issue which now needs to be backported in.

This bug was fixed in the package nautilus - 1:3.20.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
nautilus (1:3.20.1-0ubuntu1) yakkety; urgency=medium

  [ Andrea Azzarone ]
  * debian/patches/0001-desktop-canvas-view-scale-desktop-workarea.patch:
    Scale down workarea geometries to application pixels, so that icons are
    positioned correctly on hidpi setups. (LP: #1564375)

  [ Marco Trevisan (Treviño) ]
  * debian/patches/ubuntu_revert_no_wallpaper.patch:
    - Ensure nautilus-window is always using a RGBA visual

  [ Jeremy Bicha ]
  * 0003-Fix-white-desktop.patch:
    - Fix desktop wallpaper not showing (LP: #1586655)

  [ Iain Lane ]
  * Port and re-enable the remaining patches.
  * Merge with the archive branch.
  * Upload to Ubuntu - thanks to Ubuntu GNOME folks for the initial work.

  [ Michael Biebl ]
  * d/p/0001-mime-actions-use-format-argument.patch: Fix format string handling
    in show_unhandled_type_error(), patch taken from bgo#765918.

  [ Rico Tzschichholz ]
  * New upstream release
  * Bump build-deps as per configure.ac
  * Refresh patches as required
  * Update and enable 12_unity_launcher_support.patch

  [ Tim Lunn ]
  * New upstream release
  * Bump build-deps as per configure.ac
  * Refresh patches as required
  * nautilus-data.install: Don't install gconf conversion metadata
    upstream have dropped this, since it was for gnome 2 to 3 migration

 -- Iain Lane <email address hidden> Tue, 02 Aug 2016 11:43:43 +0100

When will this fix also be landed in Xenial? The gnome3-staging PPAs that is.

Seems the version in the PPA has been patched too.