Evince often hangs on close

[wvengen]

When closing an Evince 3.4.0-0ubuntu1.4 window, it often happens that the window remains open but stops responding to events. This is not document-dependent, as this behaviour is seen for different documents, for at least both PDF and EPS documents, and the same document sometimes shows this behaviour, and sometimes doesn't.

When attaching using strace, it is hanging on
    futex(0x7f57e20bb5c4, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 1, NULL

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[scottku (scottku)]

Rebooting my computer solved this problem for me.

[shoonya (dinesh2n)]

HI,
I have severely been affected by evince due to its hanging and then freezing behaviour while opening multiple pdf files. If I am in a presentnio mode of pdfs, then the freezing of files is really problemetic. Also there is no shortcut for force kill. Although I have made a lounching icon of force quit, which is availabe in Ubuntu, on the top panel. But this also not working now a days.
A simple solution I came up with is as below:
(1) create a file kill.sh
(2) write "xkill" inside it.
(3) make the file executable in terminal as : $ chmod +x xkill.sh
(4) put this file in the directory say e.g.: /home/dinesh/xkill.sh
(5) now right click on the desktop > change settings > All settings > Hardware> keyboard > shortcuts > custum shortcuts
(6) click on the '+' sign. An small window will pop up in which two items have to be filled i.e. 'Name' and 'Command'. In 'Name' write any thing say "kill" and in "command" give the path of that file i.e. "/home/dinesh/xkill.sh" and then push button "Apply".
(7) The "kill" line will appear in custom shortcuts. Now right click at the 2nd entry of the highlighted option (i.e."kill" one) of the menu. Now use some shortcut e.g. shift+F12. It will be registerd there.

done.

Now open any pdf in presentation mode/ or normal mode (or any other application). Use shortcut which has been assigned above (in our case, as above, is shift+F12). Doing this the mouse cursur will appear as "+" symbol. Whichever application it will be put and left clicked, the applicaiton will be forcly quit. A right click will represent "escape the quiting operation." i.e. do not quit.

best
Dinesh

[Paolo Montrasio (paolo-paolomontrasio)]

I'm experiencing this very same problem on a fresh install of 12.04. It didn't happen to my old PC.
I realized that it happens when gvfsd-metadata starts taking 100% of one of my CPU cores. That usually happens when I move icons on the desktop (nautilus sends a request to gvfsd-metadata). That also didn't happen on my old PC and it's quite annoying.
So the workaround for both problems (evince and 100% CPU) is pkill gvfsd-metadata
It will start again when other programs need it.

There is a thread about that a http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1421580 and a bug open at https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gvfs/+bug/517021 and the upstream one at https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=637095

It's about race conditions in the metadata daemon. It seems it has been patched by the Gnome developers but probably not in the Gnome version I'm using on 12.04

[Sebastian Wagner (sebix)]

I can confirm it for Linux Mint Rebecca / Ubuntu trusty with version 3.12.2-0ubuntu1~trusty2. These are the last lines of strace-Output:

futex(0x7f086207a370, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
futex(0x7f086207c050, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
futex(0x7f0862076a60, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
write(8, "\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0", 8) = 8
futex(0x7f086207a370, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
futex(0x7f086207c050, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
futex(0x7f0862574b24, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 1, NULL <unfinished ...>
+++ killed by SIGKILL +++
Killed

[Procion (klebed)]

The bug strikes back... again.

Evince 3.14.1-0ubuntu1 @ ubuntu 14.10 x64

[antonioni (antonioni-rocha)]

Bug confirmed in 14.04 here.

[Stego (stegomon)]

Ubuntu 14.04.2 is also affected by this bug. Very annoying! What can I do to help?

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to review all reported bugs in a timely manner. This bug was reported some time ago and there have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time.

Ubuntu 12.04 (precise) reached end-of-life on April 28, 2017.
Ubuntu 14.04 (trusty) reached end-of-life on April 25,2019.
Ubuntu 14.10 (utopic) reached end-of-life on July 23, 2015.

Does anyone still see a problem related to the one that was reported when using a currently supported version of Ubuntu? Please let us know if you do otherwise this report can be left to expire in approximately 60 days time.

Thank you for helping make Ubuntu better.

Paul White
[Ubuntu Bug Squad]

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Bug report won't expire due to bug watch
Upstream report closed "RESOLVED FIXED" on 2014-09-05
No response to comment #9 or any reports for over 4 years
Not reproducible here on either Ubuntu 18.04 or 19.10 (dev)
So closing as fixed