Software & Updates not showing authorization popup [gnome-shell[N]: pushModal: invocation of begin_modal failed]

[Colin Law]

After upgrading to Ubuntu 17.10 (from 17.04), if I open the Software and Updates app and attempt to change anything it does not popup the authorization dialog and will not let changes through. In sylog I see

Nov 23 10:07:04 tigger gnome-shell[2142]: polkitAuthenticationAgent: Received 3 identities that can be used for authentication. Only considering one.
Nov 23 10:07:04 tigger gnome-shell[2142]: pushModal: invocation of begin_modal failed
Nov 23 10:07:04 tigger gnome-shell[2142]: polkitAuthenticationAgent: Failed to show modal dialog. Dismissing authentication request for action-id com.ubuntu.softwareproperties.applychanges cookie 1-28e9d285258e7cd70c2af2980886a55b-1-cff4894642cc4a6c033597370ee1f740
Nov 23 10:07:04 tigger software-properties-gnome.desktop[3367]: ERROR:root:Authentication canceled, changes have not been saved

Before the upgrade it was ok.
Other apps that require authorisation function as expected.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 17.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.26.1-0ubuntu5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.13.0-17.20-generic 4.13.8
Uname: Linux 4.13.0-17-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.7-0ubuntu3.5
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Thu Nov 23 10:07:44 2017
DisplayManager: lightdm
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-10-21 (1128 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.10 "Utopic Unicorn" - Alpha amd64 (20141017)
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to artful on 2017-11-22 (0 days ago)

[Maciej Piechotka (uzytkownik2)]

gnome-shell periodically stops working - no response to most mouse inputs (hot corner gives animation but not change into overlay). The only indication of failure is message "Gjs-Message: JS LOG: pushModal: invocation of begin_modal failed" on stdout. I could not find more problems in journalctl.

[Jasper St. Pierre (jstpierre)]

That means that some other application took an X11 grab. There's not much I can tell you other than to find the application that did that and figure out what's going on.

[Craig l300lvl (l300lvl)]

this is a known bug when using the Overview on Startup or alternate Jump to Overview extension. I was never wise enough to determine why or what we are doing wrong to cause this, but alas it happens depending on how you use the extension. Some talk can be found here, but we are both clueless:

https://github.com/simonthechipmunk/jumptooverview/issues/1

i dont know if you have installed these or anything similair, but just though id mention that some weird things can make it happen...

[Maciej Piechotka (uzytkownik2)]

(In reply to Jasper St. Pierre from comment #1)
> That means that some other application took an X11 grab. There's not much I
> can tell you other than to find the application that did that and figure out
> what's going on.

Hmm.

 - During one repro the only other application running was firefox so the options are limited.
 - Restart of gnome-shell (from tty1 or if gnome-temrminal had focus at the time of bug) should not fix the problem as far as I understand as the offending application would still hold the lock - but it does here.

PS. I don't have any extensions installed.

[Jasper St. Pierre (jstpierre)]

Unfortunately, debugging tools on X11 are severely limited -- there is no application which can tell you who took the grab. Are you able to reproduce it often?

[Maciej Piechotka (uzytkownik2)]

(In reply to Jasper St. Pierre from comment #4)
> Unfortunately, debugging tools on X11 are severely limited -- there is no
> application which can tell you who took the grab. Are you able to reproduce
> it often?

I reproduced it multiple times over the weekend but not since then. It might be due to usage patters on workdays/weekends (or amount of things I do during workdays on my own computer).

[Satellitgo (satellitgo)]

I see this in efi boot f23 Alpha RC-2 workstation x86_64 installed to HD
may be related to ff google callendar pop up event alerts..?
Total system freezes up have to cold boot to recover.

[Michael Catanzaro (mike-catanzaro)]

(In reply to Jasper St. Pierre (not reading bugmail) from comment #1)
> That means that some other application took an X11 grab. There's not much I
> can tell you other than to find the application that did that and figure out
> what's going on.

This happens to me every few days. Today it happened with Epiphany, GNOME Terminal, gedit, Boxes, and System Settings open.

Surely the shell should be robust to this; applications should not be able to break the desktop....

[Rstrode (rstrode)]

it's a limitation of X that applications can break the desktop like that. Wayland fixes it.

Anyway, I think Daniel Stone added the ability to print grab clients a while back. digging a little, what you have to do is:

$ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options "['grab:debug']"

then hit ctrl-alt-F11 and grab info will be sent to the journal. You'll still have to use xwininfo or xlsclients or something to match up the client ids.

[Maciej Piechotka (uzytkownik2)]

(In reply to Ray Strode [halfline] from comment #8)
> it's a limitation of X that applications can break the desktop like that.
> Wayland fixes it.
>
> Anyway, I think Daniel Stone added the ability to print grab clients a while
> back. digging a little, what you have to do is:
>
> $ gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.input-sources xkb-options "['grab:debug']"
>
> then hit ctrl-alt-F11 and grab info will be sent to the journal. You'll
> still have to use xwininfo or xlsclients or something to match up the client
> ids.

I cannot find anything like that in journal. Any hints on what I should look for?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Rstrode (rstrode)]

sorry just noticed your question a year later.

The message is something like

Printing all currently active device grabs:
Active grab 0xc00lbad (xi2) on device 'Virtual core pointer' (2)
End list of active device grabs

should be in the X log.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 17.10 (artful) reached end-of-life on July 19, 2018.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in and change the bug status to Confirmed.

[Dariusz Deoniziak (darekdeoniziak)]

I have the same problem since 17.10, running currently 18.04. Reinstalling gnome-software did not help.

gnome-software does not show apt updates at all. I have to update system using apt from terminal or update-manager

Found similar issue in debian mailinglist, but related only to empty updates list: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=851796

Adding attachment file with gnome-software running with --verbose command, 9581 is the line where I've typed in other terminal: "sudo apt update".

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

@Darius this bug is about the Software & Updates app, which is the one that controls sources.list etc. The bug is that it does not popup the Authorization dialog. It seems to be in no way related to your issue.

[Dariusz Deoniziak (darekdeoniziak)]

@Colin Authorization dialog does not show up for me also and I am getting same error message in logs. I only linked second issue because I think it could be related.

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

@Darius, the point is the bug is not about gnome-software it is about software-properties-gtk. To run it from a terminal use the command
/usr/bin/python3 /usr/bin/software-properties-gtk

[Luis (perdigao)]

I am having similar problem in Lubuntu 18.04 LTS. I found it originally when I run 'Software and Updates' from the menu (software-properties-gtk) and try to check/uncheck software sources. Checking/unchecking does not work. I can only see the error message "ERROR:root:Authentication canceled, changes have not been saved" if I run it from the command line.

[Luis (perdigao)]

I seem to have found a solution. Install polkit, in my case
sudo apt install lxpolkit

And then, it may be useful to check the Default applications in Menu -> Preferences -> Default applications for LXSession , select Core Applications , and make sure 'Polkit Agent' is set to lxpolkit.

Is it possible that in the default installation of ubuntu, the polkit package is not being installed by default?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Luis,

Can you please confirm that you are talking about the same error as in the bug description here? (paste it here)

If it's a different error then a new bug should be opened.

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

Just to confirm I am still seeing this in 18.10. A few more details:
If I open Software & Updates and switch to the Other Software tab and click one of the checkboxes the window loses focus but the authentication dialog does not appear (I have checked it is not under another window). If however I click a checkbox on the Ubuntu Software tab then the authentication dialog does appear.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Explaining the rls-dd-notfixing tagging, we reviewed the bug in our team meeting. There has been one report only so far and those warnings/similar problem exist upstream, we believe at this point that the bug is neither new nor easy to trigger and while it would be nice to fix it's not a candidate for release targetting in the current state

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

Just to confirm I can reproduce this 100% reliably in 18.10 and in Disco, as follows.
Open Software & Updates and switch to the Other Software tab and click one of the checkboxes the window loses focus but the authentication dialog does not appear (I have checked it is not under another window). If however I click a checkbox on the Ubuntu Software tab then the authentication dialog does appear.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

@Colin, can you add your journalctl log after getting the issue? I can't reproduce on any machine :-/

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

Log attached, this is from the Disco system

[Angel D. Segarra (angel-segarra)]

I can also reproduce this reliably in Disco. I tried to enable Canonical Partner packages so I think it's easy to trigger.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Do you have any special component/application open that could grab the focus and make gnome-shell fail it?

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

For myself, I have not got any other applications open, and I have not got any Gnome shell extensions enabled (according to Gnome Tweaks).
There must be something significant about the fact that it only fails from the Other Software tab, it works from the Ubuntu S/W, Updates and Developer Options tabs.
There must be something unusual about the failing systems though, but what it is remains a mystery.

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

It doesn't seem to be to do with user settings as I have tried making a new user and it fails for that user also.
I can also confirm that it is ok on Wayland, which is not surprising.

[mdalacu (mdalacu)]

I have this bug also in Disco...i can not update from update-manager if it is a kernel update...the window asking for credential fails to appear.
ERROR:root:Authentication canceled, changes have not been saved

[Andre Klapper (a9016009)]

Maciej: Is this still an issue? Or can this be closed as RESOLVED OBSOLETE?

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

It is still an issue on 19.04.
Steps to replicate:
Open Software & Updates and switch to the Other Software tab and click one of the checkboxes. The window loses focus but the authentication dialog does not appear. If however a checkbox on the Ubuntu Software tab is clicked then the authentication dialog does appear.

[Arnaud D (class101)]

After days of fresh reinstallations and tests, I finally found what was causing this on my end and finally solved it by using a xorg configuration override 10-evdev.conf as shown on [1]

Offender: Gaming mouse driver (Saitek Cyborg R.A.T.9 Wireless Mouse)
Driver: libinput

After a bit of research, I found that this mouse is known to be malfunctioning with the default settings on Xorg. Despite working at a first look, the default configuration is causing the below symptoms as explained by [2]

After being plugged, the mouse will seems to work, but you may experience different issues :
* You cannot move windows around when grabbing the window's title bar. (happens with Openbox and other Window manager)
* You cannot click on buttons.
* You cannot get the focus on windows.
* You cannot open menus, even with keyboard shortcuts.
* Display does not refresh (using Xcompmgr)
* Closing certain windows restores functionality until the mouse locks into a new window.

[1] https://github.com/rkruk/R.A.T.-Cyborg-Mouse-on-Linux [working solution for R.A.T.9 model]
[2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mad_Catz_Mouse

I hope this helps somes outta there

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

@Arnaud D this bug is specifically about the Authorization dialog in the Software and Updates app. It is not a general problem with the mouse. In fact it is nothing to do with the mouse at all.

[Gima+bugzilla-gnome (gima+bugzilla-gnome)]

(In reply to André Klapper from comment #11)
> Maciej: Is this still an issue? Or can this be closed as RESOLVED OBSOLETE?

This is still a problem and has been driving me nuts over the last month or so. I'm probably motivated enough to try and retrieve more information out of this (to help debug this) in case someone could point to me how.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY THOUGHTS:

If I'd have to wager a guess..:

-> I'd say the bug exists in something related to Window Manager
(in case that's responsible for managing window focus)

-> It's probably not gnome-shell related
.. because I'm running Cinnamon

-> It's common to GNOME Desktop Environment and Cinnamon Desktop Environment, because the bug has been reported here
.. and since the bug was reported over 4 years ago, it's probably something that's not changed in all this time AND is shared code between these two projects.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE BUG:

Occasionally mouse clicks stop being sent to the window that's active. They either seem to be lost/ignored, or are sent to the wrong window (which I observed by selecting text in a terminal and text was instead being selected in another terminal window).

Keyboard works correctly, and can change window focus by Alt+Tab.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WHAT I TRIED:

Running `cinnamon --replace & disown` and it didn't help. The only result was, that I was given some output, such as multiple lines of:
> Cjs-Message: 12:17:06.726: JS LOG: pushModal: invocation of begin_modal failed
and
> (cinnamon:50760): Cjs-WARNING **: 12:27:40.742: JS ERROR: TypeError: b is null
Panel.prototype._updatePanelVisibility@/usr/share/cinnamon/js/ui/panel.js:3481:44

The stupidest thing is, that after playing around without mouse for a while, the problem disappeared by itself! (about 5 to 10 minutes)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MY SYSTEM SPECS:

  Operating System: Arch Linux
            Kernel: Linux 4.19.89-1-lts
      Architecture: x86-64

local/cinnamon 4.4.4-1
local/cinnamon-desktop 4.4.1-1
local/cinnamon-session 4.4.0-1
local/cinnamon-settings-daemon 4.4.0-2
local/cjs 4.2.0-1
local/muffin 4.4.1-1

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 19.04 (disco) reached end-of-life on January 23, 2020.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in and change the bug status to Confirmed.

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

I am still seeing this in 19.10 (eoan).

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

I don't seem to be able to change the status back to confirmed for some reason.

[Sarpreet (sarpreet)]

I am still seeing thins on a fresh Eoan install ..
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1857892

[Dimass036 (dimass036)]

Have recently faced the same issue on Ubuntu 18.04. It occurs rather frequently, sometimes, within ten minutes. Previously, it has never occurred. Same message is printed in the logs.

Upgrade to Ubuntu 20.04, which ships GNOME Shell 3.36.2, did not help.

There is an immediate workaround, documented on the unix stack exchange/ Switching to login screen (Ctrl+Alt+F1) and back to the main (Ctrl+Alt+F2) helps: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/502315/gnome-partially-stops-responding-to-mouse-keyboard

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.
Ubuntu 19.10 (eoan) reached end-of-life on July 17, 2020.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.

[Coenraad Loubser (dagelf)]

Aaand... here I am on 20.04 with the same issue. What does software-properties-gtk use to prompt for root access - and why doesn't it work?

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

Is this really related to the linked gnome-shell bug? It doesn't look related to me. This bug is completely reproducible whereas the linked one seems to be an intermittent complete failure of the shell.

[PanScan (pawelwod)]

Hi,
Is there a chance to get this fixed or have a workaround? I'm using Ubuntu 18.04 and situation is getting worse. I berly can use my OS. If you need debug log or some other support pls let me know I can provide it.

[PanScan (pawelwod)]

I'm also facing this issue on Ubuntu 18.04. When I used Dmitry workaround journalctl spitted number of stack traces and asserts, but everything started to work.

I'm attaching this log.

[PanScan (pawelwod)]

Created attachment 374289
Journalctl after using Ctrl+Alt+F1

[Dimass036 (dimass036)]

I think it might have been something wrong with my wireless mouse, because it also caused some issues with the window manager on Macs. I have a set of Microsoft keyboard and mouse, and when I used the mouse on Mac, it caused some issues with highlighting of menu items. When I replaced it with a different wireless mouse (but kept the keyboard), the issue was gone.

As I used the same keyboard and mouse on Linux, I suspect this issue was also somehow caused by the mouse. If you face this issue, consider checking if it reproduces with a different mouse.

Even if this hypothesis is correct, I wonder what can go wrong with a mouse so that it appears to work but breaks window managers on different OSes, and how to debug it. It used to work perfectly.

[Gnome-sysadmin (gnome-sysadmin)]

GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org.
As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org
which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately
quite limited so not every ticket can get handled).

If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent
and supported software version, then please follow
  https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines
and create a new ticket at
  https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/

Thank you for your understanding and your help.