I figured out the source of this problem:
I installed the metacity source (apt-get source metacity), built it with
debugging and replaced the running metacity:
./src/metacity --replace
After increasing the number of workspaces to 17 and attempting to change
workspaces, metacity asserted an
Public bug reported:
Binary package hint: gnome-panel
After adding the 17th workspace from the workspace switcher, switching
to any workspace triggers a switch to workspace 1. gnome-session seems
to go into some sort of tight loop. Logging out and removing ~/.gconf*
resets the workspaces and
** Attachment added: Dependencies.txt
http://launchpadlibrarian.net/41799360/Dependencies.txt
** Attachment added: GConfNonDefault.txt
http://launchpadlibrarian.net/41799361/GConfNonDefault.txt
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Workspace switcher no longer works after adding 17th workspace
A little more information -
The window manager is metacity. I can go into gconf-editor and change
the number of workspaces there. The same result occurs. When the
number of workspaces is set above 16, nothing seems to occur at that
point (when num_workspaces is actually changed). However,
