Ignition 8.1.45 designer asking for monitor sharing

Hi all,
opening a designer from an Ignition 8.1.45 gateway I've been asked to share my monitor (I'm on Ubuntu 24.04) and an icon appears from time to time on the activity bar like the following
image
Any idea?
Thanks in advance, regards

The Synthetica look and feel has some goofy fallback code path that uses java.awt.Robot in the course of rendering shadows or opacity or something for popup menus.

You might be able to disable it in a startup script or something.

from javax.swing import UIManager
UIManager.put("Synthetica.popupRobot.enabled", False)
1 Like

On a KDE Wayland session a screen sharing dialog pops up continually any time you try to access a menu item, and choosing the output to share does not seem to have any effect or "stick", preventing access to the menu.

As a workaround, the Designer can be started with -Dawt.robot.screenshotMethod=x11, which will simply cause the screen sharing attempt to fail rather than invoke this new dbus sharing request code path that doesn't seem to work on KDE.

https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8307456
https://bugs.openjdk.org/browse/JDK-8280982

and related

Interesting, noted. (I don't use Wayland--it's fairly new multi-monitor support doesn't play well with KDE.)

Does this mean that it's the Synthetica components calling java.awt.robot that triggers the request, despite nobody actually requesting a screen shot?
Weird, but thanks for looking into this for us.

Yes, it does it in the course of trying to render a shadow on the popup menu or something.

I experienced the same issue on 8.1.47.

Adding the JVM argument -Dawt.robot.screenshotMethod=x11 as Kevin said works for the time being, but there are some minor issues. the shadows on UI elements appear black, and drop-down menus appear in unpredictable places.

ignition_designer_bug

I have multiple monitors, and sometimes opened dropdowns appear on a different monitor from where I have Ignition Designer open.

Ignition Designer "About" window

Ignition Platform 8.1.47 (b2025022612)
SFC Module 5.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
SQL Bridge Module 10.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
Serial Support Client Module 6.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
Reporting Module 6.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
Perspective Module 2.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
Symbol Factory Module 7.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
WebDev Module 5.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
Alarm Notification Module 6.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
OPC-UA Module 9.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
Enterprise Administration Module 4.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
Legacy DNP3 Driver Module 4.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
Vision Module 11.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial
Web Browser Module 5.1.47 (b2025022612) Trial

Connected Gateway: http://localhost:9088
Java Version: Azul Systems, Inc. 17.0.13
JVM Memory (used/max MB): 357.0 / 1,024.0
Client Time Zone: America/New_York [GMT-5:00]
Gateway Time Zone: America/New_York [GMT-5:00]

General system info

OS: EndeavourOS x86_64
Kernel: Linux 6.13.5-arch1-1
Shell: zsh 5.9
Display (DELL P2217H): 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz in 21" [External]
Display (DELL P2422H): 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz in 24" [External]
Display (LGD06B3): 1920x1200 @ 60 Hz in 16" [Built-in] *
DE: KDE Plasma 6.3.2
WM: KWin (Wayland)
WM Theme: Breeze
Theme: Breeze (Dark) [Qt], Breeze-Dark [GTK2], Breeze [GTK3]
Icons: breeze-dark [Qt], breeze-dark [GTK2/3/4]
Font: Noto Sans (10pt) [Qt], Noto Sans (10pt) [GTK2/3/4]
Cursor: breeze (24px)
Terminal: konsole 24.12.2
CPU: 12th Gen Intel(R) Core(TM) i9-12900H (20) @ 5.00 GHz
GPU 1: NVIDIA RTX A2000 8GB Laptop GPU
GPU 2: Intel Iris Xe Graphics @ 1.45 GHz [Integrated]
Memory: 15.10 GiB / 31.02 GiB (49%)
Swap: 510.35 MiB / 512.00 MiB (100%)
Locale: en_US.UTF-8

8.1.48 is going to support -Dignition.synthetica.customXml=... system property that you can point towards a synthetica XML file, such as one containing this:

<synth>
    <defaultsProperty key="Synthetica.popupRobot.enabled" type="boolean" value="false"/>
</synth>

which can be used to set the Synthetica.popupRobot.enabled property, as well as any other Synthetica UIManager property.

I'm not sure if the popup menus appearing in random places are related to this or not.