System Unusable after Sep 18 updates

Support GNOME
1

I am using Manjaro Gnome. After the updates of 18 September, I rebooted and my system reached the login screen as usual.

I enter password, then briefly see a screen with the message: “Oops Something has gone wrong. A problem has occurred and the system can’t recover. Please log out and try again”.

This goes away after a few seconds, and I see the Activities Overview screen.

However, at the Activities Overview, trying to open any application also produces the “Oops Something Went wrong. Please log in and try again”. But in this case, the message remains on screen, so I click the login button below the message, and again return to login screen. Logging in again fails with the “Oops” message. This all repeats.

How can I fix this?

(posted from a different computer since Manjaro is now unusable.)

2 Likes
2

Can’t reproduce. Disable all extensions and try again.

1 Like
3

I cannot start any GUI application from the Overview, but I used the console and removed all the user-installed extension files from ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions.

Restarted. and there is no change in behavior.

4

Additional information:

I just discovered that I can start applications from Overview with Alt+F2 and entering the application’s command, for example “gnome-terminal”. But they are only in the Overview - when I click on the application in the overview screen to use it, it does not switch to a desktop view for use - instead, I get the “Oops…something has gone wrong” message.

5

I’ve experienced some of the behavior you describe in testing. My solution was to not use the nonfree mesa drivers.

Since you can use the console does the journal output anything useful about gnome shell or gnome session?

6

I’m not familiar with the non-free drivers. How can I tell if I am using them? I rather doubt this would be a factor, since everything was fine before this Sept. 18th update.

7

If you are not familiar then you are probably not using the nonfree driver.

Does the journal have aything usefull to say?

eg: journalctl --boot --priority=3 should list errors in the current booted session.

8

I will post the part here that looks relevant:

Sep 18 13:35:06 Sydney gdm-password][1454]: gkr-pam: unable to locate daemon control file
Sep 18 13:35:08 Sydney systemd[1473]: Failed to start Application launched by gnome-session-binary.
Sep 18 13:35:10 Sydney gnome-shell[1641]: Received an X Window System error.    
                                      This probably reflects a bug in the program.
                                      The error was 'BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)'.
                                        (Details: serial 2661 error_code 8 request_code 147 (unknown) minor_code 6)
                                        (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
                                         that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
                                         To debug your program, run it with the MUTTER_SYNC environment
                                         variable to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
                                         backtrace from your debugger if you break on the meta_x_error() function.)
Sep 18 13:35:11 Sydney systemd-coredump[2193]: Process 1641 (gnome-shell) of user 1000 dumped core.

``

9

Seeing the mention of “X Window System error” in the posted output, I enabled Wayland in /etc/gdm/custom.conf

Restarted, and I again have a working system.

2 Likes
10

I have the same problem but the error seems to show randomly, I have not added any not-preinstalled extension, switch to Wayland is not feasible for me. Which approach suggest to investigate deeper?

Edit:
I can reproduce by:

  • Enable all preinstalled extension
  • Enable caffeine-ng
  • Change power mode
set 19 10:29:08 rog asusd[1041]: INFO: ProfileZbus: platform_profile changed to Balanced
set 19 10:29:08 rog gnome-shell[11372]: Received an X Window System error.
                                        This probably reflects a bug in the program.
                                        The error was 'BadMatch (invalid parameter attributes)'.
                                          (Details: serial 53534 error_code 8 request_code 147 (unknown) minor_code 6)
                                          (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
                                           that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
                                           To debug your program, run it with the MUTTER_SYNC environment
                                           variable to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
                                           backtrace from your debugger if you break on the meta_x_error() function.)
set 19 10:29:08 rog gnome-shell[11372]: == Stack trace for context 0x55c27456f520 ==
set 19 10:29:08 rog systemd[1]: Started Process Core Dump (PID 12959/UID 0).
set 19 10:29:10 rog systemd-coredump[12960]: [🡕] Process 11372 (gnome-shell) of user 1000 dumped core.
                                             
                                             Stack trace of thread 11372:
[...]
11

The day after the problem of this thread, it happened again with my other Manjaro Gnome’s update. So it is not a one off thing. It was also fixed as I described above, by using Wayland instead of Xorg.

That’s not solving the problem with Xorg, it’s just avoiding the problem.

Also noticed:
KSnip cannot take screenshots on Wayland systems and Plank cannot be used as a dock.

In the past, Xscreensaver failed to work with Wayland, but I now see that it does. This was an unexpected surprise.

12

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