Gnome Software front end showed spinner on all actions; had to kill service process to fix

[Stuart Langridge]

When opening Gnome Software, the front screen worked fine for me (showing the featured app, editor's picks and so on) but taking any action (clicking a different tab, or clicking an application, or doing a search) showed an empty window with a spinner. There was a long-running "/usr/bin/gnome-software --gapplication-service" process running; killing that process and then starting Gnome Software made everything work again (and updated the featured app to be the current one).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: gnome-software 3.20.1+git20170208.0.a34b091-0ubuntu1~xenial1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-78.99-generic 4.4.62
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-78-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Wed Jun 14 12:38:50 2017
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-04-07 (1164 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.10 "Saucy Salamander" - Release amd64 (20131016.1)
SourcePackage: gnome-software
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to xenial on 2016-08-04 (314 days ago)

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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