Black boxes behind drop down menu in chromium based browsers (e.g. google-chrome)

Support Virtualization
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1

Hi there! I am trying Manjaro in a VirtualBox Virtual Machine with XFCE Desktop Environment and I’m experiencing some glitches in Google Chrome.

Here a picture showing the issue:

screen
screen1920×1043 71.8 KB

As can be seen in the picture I’m seeing a weird black box behind the application’s drop down menu. I’m also experiencing the same issue on other chromium-based browsers like Brave or Opera. Not seeing the issue on firefox for example.

I already tried a bunch of the solutions found on the web (one inside this forum as well) with no luck.
More specifically I already tried disabling graphic acceleration in chrome settings and disabling Override software rendering list, GPU rasterization, zero-copy rasterizer chrome flags (chrome://flags section), along with all the flags which seemed related to graphics to me.
I’ve also tried to change graphic card in the settings of the VirtualBox VM but still no luck…

Someone could give me a hand with this?

2

What is the host OS?

3

I have a vague memory of having this sort of problem with Plasma when compositing was disabled. So it may be worth checking that.

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Hi! Host OS is Microsoft Windows 11

5

HI there! Could you tell me how can I check that on xfce desktop?

6

Hi again, I’ve got some news.
Following an answer on a reddit post I managed to disable the compositor issuing the following command:

xfconf-query --channel=xfwm4 --property=/general/use_compositing --type=bool --toggle

And it actually “works”… In the sense that the black rectangle behind the menu is gone, however now the menu seems to have no borders at all.

Moreover, disabling the compositor really slows down the cursor when moving windows across the desktop and introduces major glitches during the operation, like windows traces of their previous locations in the screen while being moved with mouse.

Another weird things I experienced is that when I try to get a screenshot capture only the active window the whole drop down menu is drawn just as a black rectangle…

So compositing seems to be involved… Any idea about how to address the issue?

P.S. Sorry for absence of screenshots and link to the reddit post, but when I try to add them forum tells me I can’t embed media and links in my post

7

You might try increasing the amount of RAM allowed for graphics; or increasing RAM generally in VirtualBox for that VM. Increasing your swap space within the XFCE VM could potentially help.

On the chance that it is only a Chromium-based browser issue, you might try searching from that perspective.

Example; I found a similar report from 2019 wherein a solution was to disable GPU Rasterization in chrome://flags:

Type chrome://flags into the address bar and then ‘gpu rasterization’ into the resulting search box; and disable GPU Rasterization.

A reboot at this point might be a good choice.

Note that issues with Chromium generally have nothing to do with Manjaro. :eyes:

Screenshots (especially of text) are generally discouraged when a brief description is all that’s needed.

Until your forum privileges are increased you can post a link like this: https://forum.manjaro.org/

Notice that this allows others to easily copy/paste the the url if needed, despite it not being a live link.

Hi @deperito and welcome to the Manjaro community.

As a new forum user, please take some time to familiarise yourself with Forum requirements; in particular, the many ways to use the forum to your benefit.

To that end, some or all these links may be invaluable:

Last, but not least, the Update Announcements, which you should check frequently for important update related information.

An issue may be directly related to a particular update; these announcements should generally be checked before posting a request for support.

I hope this is helpful.

Cheers.

8

Hi there, I wanted to add some details for the community: I downloaded and installed Manjaro with KDE Plasma Desktop Environment and the problem’s gone.

So I think it could be somehow related to XFCE Desktop Environment…

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Hi and many thanks for the tips on the forum!
I was trying to upload screenshots just because, talking about graphics issues, I thought the actual picture of the problem would be much clearer, on the other hand the link was only to allow readers with the same problem to have a complete “picture” of the issue and the methods that can be found online to solve it.
Either way, no problem, I think a written description could be sufficient as well!

10

It seems we’ll never know for sure;
any hope of diagnosing the issue is now gone.

Nonetheless, I think you will find Plasma to be a more than capable DE; welcome to the (unofficial KDE user) club.

Cheers.

11

Actually I think that if I’d reinstall Manjaro with xfce I’d get the issue back, so we could investigate further if we want and/or is useful for the community… I just wanted to know if the problem was DE related.

P.S. I’ve always liked xfce/lxde’s “lightweight flavor” more than kde in the past, but I’m giving kde a chance recently… Thanks for sharing!

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Lesser capable machines (generally) were among my motivations for choosing XCFE in years gone by; and KDE was simply too heavy; Gnome, well, I haven’t much cared for it since Gtk2.

Then there’s the flip-side of that coin. I haven’t found any similar issues that identified XFCE as the culprit. After a few minutes searching I’m leaning toward it being more an incompatibility with one of many ever-changing Chromium settings in a virtual environment. :man_shrugging:

13

Lesser capable machines (generally) were among my motivations for choosing XCFE in years gone by; and KDE was simply too heavy; Gnome, well, I haven’t much cared for it since Gtk2.

Yeah, that’s pretty much my story too… But now Plasma promises to be more reactive and “lightish”, so I decided to give it a try

Then there’s the flip-side of that coin. I haven’t found any similar issues that identified XFCE as the culprit. After a few minutes searching I’m leaning toward it being more an incompatibility with one of many ever-changing Chromium settings in a virtual environment. :man_shrugging:

So an issue related to XFCE used with VirtualBox… I was thinking that maybe asking (or re-asking, since if I remember well there already is a topic on a similar issue) on VirtualBox’s forum could be interesting

14

Following up on the VirtualBox forum issue might have some potential, I suppose; I mean, we’re still largely guessing.

I was thinking more an issue with Chromium based browsers in VirtualBox, but anything is worth considering.

Did you try disabling GPU Rasterization in Chromium/Chrome, as I found in that issue report? There are many issues (concerning black borders around form elements) which made the search difficult, but I was still able to find several references to the ‘black box’ you describe.

A virtual machine could be one of the scenarios where this issue reveals itself moreso than on a real environment.

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I was thinking more an issue with Chromium based browsers in VirtualBox, but anything is worth considering.
Did you try disabling GPU Rasterization in Chromium/Chrome, as I found in that issue report? There are many issues (concerning black borders around form elements) which made the search difficult, but I was still able to find several references to the ‘black box’ you describe.
A virtual machine could be one of the scenarios where this issue reveals itself moreso than on a real environment.

Yes, actually I also think that this particular issue reveals itself in “mostly” in Virtual Machines (maybe only in VirtualBox…)
Unfortunately, as I was saying in my first message on this topic, I already tried disabling GPU rasterization, zero-copy rasterizer and other chrome flags which seemed related to graphics to me

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Ah, yes. I’ve had a sleep or two since reading the initial post.

I’m guessing you didn’t try increasing RAM in the VM as I suggested earlier. How much do you typically assign to a VM?

Chromium based browsers (in fact, most major browsers currently) can use a lot of memory; and if you haven’t also allowed sufficient swap, perhaps this might contribute.

I’ve seen Chrome referred to as a pig on more than one occasion.

17

What about disabling it all on launch (at least for testing).

e.g.:

google-chrome --disable-gpu

I have not used Virtualbox in almost two decades (but I do use other hypervisors).