crash on click Activities when app is running

[Edson T. Marques]

I believe this bug is related to the video driver but I'm not sure ... Anyway there goes the report:

This is a crash that happens every time I open two different applications (for example: Chromium and Nautilus), one of them in workspace 1 and the other in workspace 2.

When I change the focus between them for some time (from 3 to 5 times), there is a crash that causes, first, the window manager (or gnome shell, I'm not sure) to reboot, then, if I insist on trying to switch between the applications for some more times, the crash seems to be more severe and ubuntu returns to the login screen (gdm3).

I'm using a dell inspiron 15 series 7000 (gaming), notebook with 2 displays (one is the display of the notebook itself and the other is an LG 23EA53, connected via HDMI and configured as a primary)

To make the focus change I use the mouse, I click on "Activities" and, with the mouse, I click on the application that appears in the workspaces pile to the right of the display, below and above, successively until the crach occurs.

Using Alt-TAB it seems at first that the crash does not occur ... or it takes longer to occur :-)

This crash occurs when both applications are in the same workspace as well ... And if one of the applications is a virtual machine session of Virtualbox, crash occurs more quickly (with less focus shifts).

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.25.91-0ubuntu4
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.12.0-13.14-generic 4.12.10
Uname: Linux 4.12.0-13-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Sep 11 14:46:38 2017
DisplayManager: gdm3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2017-08-12 (29 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 17.10 "Artful Aardvark" - Alpha amd64 (20170812)
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Edson T. Marques (edsontmarques)]

This bug is simply making it impossible to use Gnome. I decided to send this bug report to the xserver-xorg-video-nouveau team as well.

#1716385

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This sounds like another nouveau crash. Please run these commands and paste the output in this bug...

  lspci -k

  xrandr

Please also attach a copy of: /var/log/Xorg.0.log

[Edson T. Marques (edsontmarques)]

Ok...

Unfortunately I could not find /var/log/Xorg.0.log . There is no file
named Xorg.0.log in my /var/log... nor in any of its subfolders.

$ lspci -k
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core
Processor Host Bridge/DRAM Registers (rev 05)
Subsystem: Dell Xeon E3-1200 v6/7th Gen Core Processor Host Bridge/DRAM
Registers
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Skylake PCIe Controller (x16) (rev 05)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
Kernel modules: shpchp
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Device 591b (rev 04)
Subsystem: Dell Device 0798
Kernel driver in use: i915
Kernel modules: i915
00:04.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Skylake Processor
Thermal Subsystem (rev 05)
Subsystem: Dell Skylake Processor Thermal Subsystem
Kernel driver in use: proc_thermal
Kernel modules: processor_thermal_device
00:14.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H USB 3.0 xHCI
Controller (rev 31)
Subsystem: Dell Sunrise Point-H USB 3.0 xHCI Controller
Kernel driver in use: xhci_hcd
00:14.2 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H
Thermal subsystem (rev 31)
Subsystem: Dell Sunrise Point-H Thermal subsystem
Kernel driver in use: intel_pch_thermal
Kernel modules: intel_pch_thermal
00:15.0 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H
Serial IO I2C Controller #0 (rev 31)
Subsystem: Dell Sunrise Point-H Serial IO I2C Controller
Kernel driver in use: intel-lpss
Kernel modules: intel_lpss_pci
00:15.1 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H
Serial IO I2C Controller #1 (rev 31)
Subsystem: Dell Sunrise Point-H Serial IO I2C Controller
Kernel driver in use: intel-lpss
Kernel modules: intel_lpss_pci
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H CSME
HECI #1 (rev 31)
Subsystem: Dell Sunrise Point-H CSME HECI
Kernel driver in use: mei_me
Kernel modules: mei_me
00:17.0 RAID bus controller: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile SATA Controller
[RAID mode] (rev 31)
Subsystem: Dell 82801 Mobile SATA Controller [RAID mode]
Kernel driver in use: ahci
Kernel modules: ahci
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port
#5 (rev f1)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PCI Express Root Port
#6 (rev f1)
Kernel driver in use: pcieport
Kernel modules: shpchp
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H LPC Controller (rev
31)
Subsystem: Dell Sunrise Point-H LPC Controller
00:1f.2 Memory controller: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H PMC (rev 31)
Subsystem: Dell Sunrise Point-H PMC
00:1f.3 Audio device: Intel Corporation Device a171 (rev 31)
Subsystem: Dell Device 0798
Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel
Kernel modules: snd_hda_intel
00:1f.4 SMBus: Intel Corporation Sunrise Point-H SMBus (rev 31)
Subsystem: Dell Sunrise Point-H SMBus
Kernel modules: i2c_i801
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GP107M [GeForce GTX
1050 Ti Mobile] (rev a1)
Subsystem: Dell GP107M [GeForce GTX 1050 Ti Mobile]
Kernel driver in use: nouveau
Kernel modules: nvidiafb, nouveau
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GP107GL High Definition Audio
Contr...

[Edson T. Marques (edsontmarques)]

Today I performed a new dist-upgrade on my computer ... I noticed that version 4.13.10 of the kernel was installed.

After that I renamed my home folder and created a new one to delete all the old settings.

The crash keeps happening anyway.

[Edson T. Marques (edsontmarques)]

I purged the xorg-edgers ppa in order to eliminate unstable libraries ... yet the crash continues to occur.

I could not get an earlier version to downgrade xserver-xorg-video-nouveau and doing some tests.

The situation gets very unstable when I allocate 1 application in each workarea ... when it arrives in 4 or 5 workareas the session falls and ubuntu returns to the login interface.

[Edson T. Marques (edsontmarques)]

I am still doing some tests but there is a possibility that the cause of these crashs is some or some gnome extensions.

I turned off the extensions:

- Native Windows Placement (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/18/native-window-placement/)
- Auto Move Windows (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/16/auto-move-windows/)
- Window Navigator (https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/10/windownavigator/)

... and I tried to repeat the incident but it looks like the gnome-shell has stabilized, but it's still not conclusive.

I'll continue the tests tomorrow.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I suggest you install the official Nvidia drivers for stability:

   sudo apt install nvidia-375

Also, do you have any crash files in /var/crash/ ?

[Edson T. Marques (edsontmarques)]

Thanks for the tip!

I made new tests today and noticed that while keeping the gnome extensions off, gnome-shell stabilizes completely. I think the crash was being caused by one of the extensions or the combination of them.

At the moment I'm enjoying the new ubuntu-session interface (with the gnome-shell) and I'm reviewing the need for extensions that I had installed more by inertia than by necessity.

I think I can consider this Bug as solved.

Thank you very much for your attention!