Power Options bug

[0xDEsper]

Environment:

• sysc-greet: 1.1.6
• Compositor: niri
• Terminal: kitty
• Resolution: 1440x900
• OS: Arch Linux

Bug description:

The menu (F4) appears duplicated - the menu items (Reboot, Shutdown, Cancel)
are rendered twice side by side, with the second copy offset to the right outside the dialog box.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Launch sysc-greet with niri compositor
2. Press F4 to open Power Options
3. Menu items appear duplicated

Expected behavior:
Power Options menu should show items only once, centered within the dialog.

Additional info:
Also noticed screen artifacts (half white, half dark) before the greeter fully loads,
likely related to kitty window initialization timing.

[Nomadcxx]

Thanks for this man, strange one.

I had a look and I don't think sysc-greet is drawing the F4 menu twice. That popup only renders the power options once, so my guess is kitty/niri is leaving old terminal cells behind during the fullscreen/resize stage.

The half white / half dark flash also points more toward startup timing than the menu itself. I don't think --test would cause this either, it uses the same menu rendering.

Can you send me the output of sysc-greet --version, kitty --version and niri --version?

The other useful thing would be knowing whether this only happens with F4, or if F1/F3 do anything similar. Also curious if pressing Esc and opening F4 again clears it, or if it stays broken until restart.

If you can, add --debug to the sysc-greet command once and send /tmp/sysc-greet-debug.log. Mostly looking for the Terminal resized: lines, and whether it says anything about running without alt screen.

[DezoEsper]

Thanks for this man, strange one.

I had a look and I don't think sysc-greet is drawing the F4 menu twice. That popup only renders the power options once, so my guess is kitty/niri is leaving old terminal cells behind during the fullscreen/resize stage.

The half white / half dark flash also points more toward startup timing than the menu itself. I don't think --test would cause this either, it uses the same menu rendering.

Can you send me the output of sysc-greet --version, kitty --version and niri --version?

The other useful thing would be knowing whether this only happens with F4, or if F1/F3 do anything similar. Also curious if pressing Esc and opening F4 again clears it, or if it stays broken until restart.

If you can, add --debug to the sysc-greet command once and send /tmp/sysc-greet-debug.log. Mostly looking for the Terminal resized: lines, and whether it says anything about running without alt screen.

Hey! Thanks for looking into this.
Here are the versions you asked for:

sysc-greet dev (Commit: unknown, Built: unknown)
kitty 0.46.2
niri 26.04 (8ed0da4)

I tried adding -debug to the sysc-greet command and it actually worked — I could log in normally. The debug output was showing on screen (keystrokes and all), and the interface was jumping around a lot, but the greeter functioned. I couldn't capture the log though because /tmp gets cleared on reboot and the greeter runs as the greeter user.
When I tried redirecting output to a file with 2>/var/log/sysc-greet-debug.log, that's when it completely broke — greetd kept crashing in a loop with greeter exited without creating a session. Had to fix it from TTY.
One interesting thing I noticed with -debug — the F4 power menu had no option highlighting at all. The menu items were visible but nothing was selected/highlighted. When I pressed arrow keys to navigate, the debug messages at the bottom were showing my keypresses, but the menu itself wasn't responding visually. Without -debug the menu renders with the duplication issue I described before.
Regarding your other questions — the half white/half dark flash happens every boot before the greeter loads. For F4, the power menu always shows duplicated items (Reboot/Shutdown/Cancel appear twice, with the second copy offset to the right). F1 menu works fine visually. Haven't noticed the same issue with F3. Pressing Esc and reopening F4 doesn't fix it, the duplication stays until restart.
Is there a way to redirect the debug output to a persistent file that the greeter user can write to? Or any other approach to capture those Terminal resized: lines you mentioned?

[Nomadcxx]

yep this is useful, thanks.

I pushed a possible fix to the development branch. My guess is the F4 popup was only redrawing the small menu area, so on some setups old terminal cells could hang around beside it and make it look like the menu was drawn twice.

To test the dev build: git clone https://github.com/Nomadcxx/sysc-greet.git && cd sysc-greet && git checkout development && make build && sudo install -Dm755 sysc-greet /usr/local/bin/sysc-greet

Then reboot and check if F4 still does it.

If it still happens, add --debug to the normal sysc-greet command and check /var/lib/greeter/.cache/sysc-greet/debug.log after boot.

Don't redirect stderr to /var/log from the greeter command, that can break greetd if the greeter user cannot write there.

[Nomadcxx]

Triage (2026-06-18): Keeping open as bug.

Fix "Fix power menu ghosting" is on the development branch (commit e265c41) but is not yet in a release — latest tag is v1.1.7, which predates the fix.

Please test from development and report back; if F4 still duplicates on niri 26.04, reopen with --debug output from /var/lib/greeter/.cache/sysc-greet/debug.log.