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Margo manual session checklist#

A reproducible set of post-install / post-reboot checks that exercise the parts of margo nested-smoke can't reach: real DRM output paths, layer shells, portal handshakes, multi-monitor cursor warping, the lock screen, clipboard managers, day/night colour shifts, and notification daemons.

Run each section in order; the order matters because later steps rely on earlier ones (e.g. notifications need a working dbus + portal session).

If any step fails, capture journalctl --user -u margo-session.service -n 200 plus mctl status and file an issue. The "expected" lines under each step are exact substring matches; if the actual output differs, that's the regression.

0. Bring-up#

  • [ ] Reboot to a clean session via your DM (greetd / sddm / lemurs).
  • [ ] Pick the margo session from the DM session list.
  • [ ] Type your password — see § 5 Lock screen for the keyboard-input regression history; this first login exercises the same text_input_v3 / input_method_v2 plumbing.

After login, terminal one-liner sanity: 

mctl status | head

Expected lines (substring match): * output=<your output name> active=true * layout= non-empty * tag[N] state=active focused=true for at least one tag

1. Layer shells (status bar / launcher / notifications)#

  • [ ] Status bar (noctalia / waybar) renders on the configured edge.
  • [ ] Bar widgets pick up focus changes:
    • Click a different window in the layout → bar's title slot updates within one frame.
    • Run mctl dispatch togglefullscreen from another terminal → bar's fullscreen indicator updates immediately.
  • [ ] Launcher / app-runner (rofi / fuzzel / noctalia launcher):
    • Press the bind, popup appears with the animation_type_open from the layer rule (zoom for layer_name:^(rofi|fuzzel|launcher).* per the user's config).
    • Type into the launcher → keys land (xdg_popup.grab + keyboard focus routing both work).
    • Press Esc → popup dismisses and focus drops back to the previously-focused toplevel (no "stuck on launcher" regression).

2. Notifications#

  • [ ] notify-send -a Test "Hello" "from margo" displays a toast.
  • [ ] Toast slides in / out per the noctalia-notification layer rule (or fades silently if noanim:1 is in your layerrule for the OSD).
  • [ ] Toast doesn't steal focus from the active window (no keyboard hand-off to a layer surface that didn't request keyboard interactivity).
  • [ ] notify-send -u critical "Critical" shows but doesn't lock input.

3. Clipboard#

  • [ ] wl-copy "hello" then wl-paste round-trips text.
  • [ ] CopyQ / clipse picks up the same clipboard event (data-control protocol).
  • [ ] Across XWayland: xclip -sel clip -o returns the same string (XWayland clipboard bridge alive).
  • [ ] After the source process exits, wl-paste still returns the string — wl-clip-persist or similar persistor is running.

4. Multi-monitor cursor + tag move#

  • [ ] Move the cursor to the secondary output. Cursor visibly crosses the seam (no re-warp).
  • [ ] On the secondary output, focus a window and mctl dispatch tagmon right (or your tagmon bind). Window jumps to the primary; cursor can stay where it is.
  • [ ] On the primary, tag-switch to a tag pinned to the secondary (tagrule = id:N,monitor_name:eDP-1 for some N). margo warps the focus to that monitor — you're now on the secondary.
  • [ ] mctl dispatch focusmon left and right toggle between outputs.

5. Lock screen#

  • [ ] mctl dispatch spawn 'qs -c noctalia-shell ipc call lockScreen lock' (or your lock bind, e.g. alt+l).
  • [ ] Black/blur lock surface appears on every output.
  • [ ] Type your password — the password dots (or characters) update with each keystroke. Keyboard-input regressions historically manifested here first.
  • [ ] Press Enter → unlock, your previous focus is restored.
  • [ ] Repeat with a stuck lock: kill the lock client (pkill -9 qs), then super+ctrl+alt+BackSpace (the user's force_unlock bind) tears the lock surface down.

6. Window rules#

  • [ ] Open the apps in your windowrule lines and confirm:
    • Floating size / offset matches width / height / offsetx / offsety.
    • Tags match tags:N mask (visible when you switch to that tag).
    • block_out_from_screencast:1 clients render solid black inside wf-recorder / OBS captures.
    • isnamedscratchpad:1 apps appear hidden by default and fly in on the toggle bind (see § 7).
  • [ ] Run scripts/smoke-rules.sh from the source tree — it walks the same rules programmatically.

7. Scratchpads#

The user has four named scratchpads: dropdown-terminal, yazi-scratchpad, clipse, wiremix. For each:

  • [ ] First press of the toggle bind launches the app at its rule-defined geometry (visible from frame zero — the bootstrap path puts it visible immediately).
  • [ ] Same bind a second time hides it (window unmaps from the scene; another window receives focus).
  • [ ] Third press shows it again on the cursor's monitor (not the previously focused monitor — scratchpad_cross_monitor=1 follows pointer).
  • [ ] With one scratchpad visible, pressing a different scratchpad's bind hides the first and shows the second (single_scratchpad=1).
  • [ ] Emergency: any window that ends up "stuck floating / scratchpad", focus it and press super+ctrl+Escape (unscratchpad); it returns to the layout.

8. Animations#

  • [ ] Open a new toplevel: zoom + fade-in over animation_duration_open.
  • [ ] Close it: scale-down + fade-out over animation_duration_close.
  • [ ] super+r (set_proportion) on a scroller window: smooth slide, border tracks the surface with no offset.
  • [ ] Tag switch (super+1 … super+9): outgoing windows snapshot-slide out, incoming windows slide in from the opposite edge.
  • [ ] Focus another window: border colour cross-fades over animation_duration_focus (120 ms by default).
  • [ ] Open/close noctalia panels: layer-rule animation kind applies (zoom for launcher, slide for control-center, none for OSD/volume/notification toasts).

9. Day / night colour shift#

  • [ ] sunsetr (or your gamma-control client) fires at the configured sunset time.
  • [ ] Output gradually warms (gamma LUT change visible).
  • [ ] Toggling sunsetr off restores the default gamma without a flash.

10. Portal file picker#

  • [ ] In a browser (Helium / Chromium), click "Upload file".
  • [ ] xdg-desktop-portal-{gtk,gnome} dialog appears as a floating window (your windowrule has appid:^xdg-desktop-portal-...$ → width:960 height:720).
  • [ ] Arrow keys / Enter / Escape work inside the portal — popup grab routed correctly.
  • [ ] Selecting a file closes the portal and the upload proceeds.

11. Screen recording / screencopy#

  • [ ] wf-recorder -f /tmp/test.mp4 for ~3 s, Ctrl-C → file produced.
  • [ ] grim -g "$(slurp)" /tmp/region.png → region screenshot.
  • [ ] Block-out rules: a password manager window in the recording shows as solid black, not transparent.

12. XWayland sanity#

  • [ ] DISPLAY=$DISPLAY xeyes runs (Xwayland is up).
  • [ ] Steam / Discord / Spotify (XWayland clients) show the correct cursor size — no shrinkage on hover (XCURSOR_SIZE export works).
  • [ ] Browser self-activation (clicking a link, switching tabs) doesn't bounce you to a different tag (view_current_to_back regression fix).

13. Resource usage when idle#

After 30 s of doing nothing:

  • [ ] top -bn1 -p $(pgrep -d, margo) shows margo around 0–1 % CPU.
  • [ ] intel_gpu_top (or nvtop / radeontop) shows the GPU at idle / low render rate when nothing is animating.

If margo CPU is pinned at >5 % idle, that's the hot-loop regression class — capture journalctl --user -u margo-session.service -n 1000 | grep border and investigate.

Reset between runs#

Some checks pollute state (focused tag, opened scratchpads, layered notifications). Reset for the next pass with:

mctl dispatch view 1
pkill -KILL kitty mpv yazi clipse wiremix 2>/dev/null

Then continue from § 1.