GNOME Shell randomly crashed. Again.

[hackel]

Unfortunately, this has become a daily occurrence (at least). This time, I was working in the Guake terminal (as I am almost all the time), when suddenly everything froze other than my mouse cursor. I was actually trying to highlight a some text to copy when it happened. Eventually, gnome-shell restarted itself, but it took at least 30 seconds (might have been 60? I wasn't keeping track), during which time there was no indication to the user as to what was going on.

Aside from the bug itself, this provides a terrible user experience. It also ensures that I absolutely cannot switch to Wayland until this frequent crashing is resolved, or Gnome-shell under Wayland can crash without taking down the entire desktop with it.

ProblemType: Crash
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.26.0-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-12.13-generic 4.13.3
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu2
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Wed Oct 11 09:53:58 2017
DisplayManager: gdm3
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-shell
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-08-03 (1164 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140722.2)
ProcCmdline: /usr/bin/gnome-shell
SegvAnalysis:
 Segfault happened at: 0x7fd57acbde56 <g_type_check_instance_cast+22>: mov (%rdi),%rdi
 PC (0x7fd57acbde56) ok
 source "(%rdi)" (0x008163a2) not located in a known VMA region (needed readable region)!
 destination "%rdi" ok
SegvReason: reading unknown VMA
Signal: 11
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
StacktraceTop:
 g_type_check_instance_cast () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
 () at /usr/lib/gnome-shell/libgnome-shell.so
 g_closure_invoke () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
 () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
 g_signal_emit_valist () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
Title: gnome-shell crashed with SIGSEGV in g_type_check_instance_cast()
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to artful on 2017-09-29 (11 days ago)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip docker kvm libvirtd lpadmin lxd plugdev sambashare sudo video www-data

[Apport retracing service (apport)]

StacktraceTop:
 type_descriptive_name_I (type=93921632388064) at ../../../../gobject/gtype.c:694
 g_type_check_instance_cast (type_instance=0x8163a2, iface_type=93921632388064) at ../../../../gobject/gtype.c:4069
 shell_gtk_embed_window_created_cb (display=0x556bd5988170, window=0x556bdc866bc0, embed=0x556bd9225bb0) at ../src/shell-gtk-embed.c:67
 g_closure_invoke (closure=0x556bdd086ba0, return_value=0x0, n_param_values=2, param_values=0x7ffcde9f3ca0, invocation_hint=0x7ffcde9f3c20) at ../../../../gobject/gclosure.c:804
 signal_emit_unlocked_R (node=<optimized out>, detail=0, instance=0x556bd5988170, emission_return=0x0, instance_and_params=0x7ffcde9f3ca0) at ../../../../gobject/gsignal.c:3564

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

This looks pretty close to bug 1714745 so marking as a duplicate.