Evince hangs on start attempting to stat non-existant file

[Ryan Bair]

Binary package hint: evince

Evince hangs on start after a previously opened file is no longer available. In my case /pump an auto-mount point to a CIFS share that is currently unavailable. Evince hangs indefinitely while trying to stat this file.

Here's the interesting part of my strace:

time(NULL) = 1176599654
.....
time(NULL) = 1176599654
time(NULL) = 1176599654
stat64("/pump/data/IT/Pump Network IT/users.pdf",

[Ryan Bair (dr.bair)]

Full strace for problem:

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug. That's likely to build the "recently open" list and not list item which are not available, why do you think it's a bug?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

We are closing this bug report as it lacks the information, described in the previous comments, we need to investigate the problem further. However, please reopen it if you can give us the missing information and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future.

[Ryan Bair (dr.bair)]

Re-opening the bug after a long break...

When a document is on the recently opened items list that is on an auto-mounted CIFS share that is not available, evince will hang indefinitely. If the CIFS share is available, automounter is stopped, or the file was deleted (and the CIFS share is available) there is no issue.

I get hit with this issue quite often (almost daily). I've actually made myself a little wrapper script to clear out the recent files before it launches evince.

Steps to reproduce:
1. Set up an automounting CIFS share.
2. Open PDF document on the CIFS share with evince.
3. Close evince.
4. Pull network cable (make the share unavailable).
5. Try opening evince.
At this point, evince will appear not to launch. If you try launching it again with strace, you should see it hung up trying to stat the previously opened pdf document.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the bug might be due cifs hanging rather than evince

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

can you trigger the bug without using cifs? does it happen with other applications, eog for example? Could you describe easy steps to set up a cifs configuration?

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Closing this bug report as no further information has been provided. Please feel free to reopen this bug if you can provide the information asked for. Thanks!.

[Alexis de Lattre (alexis-via)]

I am also affected by this bug on a daily basis ; it is quite annoying, and it's been around for a many years now ! The steps described by Ryan Bair in comment #4 are the exact steps needed to reproduce the bug.

Reply to comment #6 "Could you describe easy steps to set up a cifs configuration ?"
-> you just need to install a samba server and edit smb.conf to setup a share.