Ghidra on Debian 13 Trixie UI windows randomly disappear and modals fail to show

[eshattow]

More often than not a new window (such as opening Memory Map from Code Browser) does not become visible until I switch virtual workspaces and then switch again back to where Ghidra is. This applies to all modals and new windows. This also applies to dropdown elements themselves for combo boxes which makes difficult or impossible the use of such elements.

Occasionally, Ghidra does operate as expected for a few minutes, until it goes back to misbehaving. I can't figure out if it's something I've done to make or break it.

Host system is typical Gnome install on standard upstream drivers for AMD Radeon RX 5600xt graphics, Debian 13 Trixie and nothing exotic. I don't know if this was ever working properly as I am recently a new Ghidra user. Initially I thought Ghidra was frozen / crashing but it was just a modal that failed to render (so the remaining interface is not accessible); and by some luck I middle-mouse-wheel rolled to a new virtual workspace and back which caused the modal to show and be interactive.

What magic incantation is needed to make openjdk-21-jdk and Ghidra useable? Does anyone else have confirmation there is some trouble?

ghidra_11.4.2_PUBLIC

[dragonmacher]

IIRC, we have seen odd modal dialog behavior on some Linux distros relating to virtual workspaces. We have no known workaround for this issue. Maybe someone in the community has more info.

[eshattow]

It's almost impossible to use Ghidra this way. The windows apparently fail to draw but they are present and take input, so it would be easy to gather debug information as it is not a rare occurrence. What specific debug information would be useful to know?

[eshattow]

I did find some workaround. Commenting out some of the VMARGS env variable settings in support/launch.properties appears to be having some kind of impact:

# The following options affect rendering on different platforms.  It may be necessary to play
# with these settings to get Ghidra to display and perform optimally on HiDPI monitors or in VM's.
##
#VMARGS=-Dsun.java2d.opengl=false
#VMARGS_LINUX=-Dsun.java2d.pmoffscreen=false
#VMARGS_LINUX=-Dsun.java2d.xrender=true
#VMARGS_LINUX=-Dsun.java2d.uiScale=1
#VMARGS_LINUX=-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on
##
VMARGS_WINDOWS=-Dsun.java2d.d3d=false