gnome-shell freezes and crashes upon usb drive insertion

[alperyilmaz]

1) Release
Ubuntu 17.10

2)Package version
gnome-shell 3.26.2-0ubuntu0.1

3) What is expected

After inserting, external HD drive, USB flash drive or phone (to charge) the computer should not freeze and crash

4) What happens instead
Almost all the time, when I insert an external drive gnome-shell freezes for a while and then restarts. I check the `dmesg` output and couldn't find the cause of this problem. And, not sure where to start and what to diagnose or test.
Also, unfortunately I don't have a script or method to reproducible this error elsewhere. I'm willing to participate if any developer wants to do tests.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Please have a look in /var/crash for any unreported crash files. If you fine some for gnome-shell then please use the command:

  ubuntu-bug /var/crash/YOURFILE.crash

to securely upload the crash.

Regardless of whether you can find any recent crash files, please then run this command in a shell on the affected machine:

  xdg-open "https://errors.ubuntu.com/user/"`sudo cat /var/lib/whoopsie/whoopsie-id`

or as two lines both ending in backticks:

  xdg-open "https://errors.ubuntu.com/user/"`
  sudo cat /var/lib/whoopsie/whoopsie-id`

That will then open a web page showing you your system's crash history. If you find any links to gnome-shell crashes on that page then please tell us what those are here.

[alperyilmaz (alperyilmaz)]

Hi, thanks for pointing out what to do..

There was gnome-shell related crash file under /var/crash/, and since usually I file error report after each crash there were .upload and .uploaded files as well.

Here are the file names:
var/crash/_usr_bin_gnome-shell.1000.crash
/var/crash/_usr_bin_gnome-shell.1000.upload
/var/crash/_usr_bin_gnome-shell.1000.uploaded

Then I ran the ubuntu-bug on the crash file, I got internal error message window, I selected "send error report" and clicked "Continue" (I'm not sure if the errors.ubuntu.com showing recent reports from my machine, because I didnt see the report I sent today (Jan 7, 2018)

Then, I did the second thing you mentioned, here's the link to error reports from my machine at errors.ubuntu.com

https://errors.ubuntu.com/oops/1262ee46-bb11-11e7-8683-fa163ef911dc

But, I sent many crash reports about gnome-shell, I only saw one from Oct 27th, 2017. I also didn't see the report I just uploaded with "ubuntu-bug" today. Should I upload the recent crash report here, is it secure to do so? By the way, the crash file is 200 MB in size..

Thanks.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

No thanks, it's not secure to attach crash files here.

Your link shows you are experiencing bug 1720768. It appears plausible this is that same bug so let's make this a duplicate and only reopen this one if a fix for bug 1720768 doesn't help.

[alperyilmaz (alperyilmaz)]

Sorry, I don't mean to say "duplicate status is wrong" but can anybody review my latest crash report which can be found here:

https://errors.ubuntu.com/oops/1b01bffc-f6bf-11e7-af73-fa163e54c21f

The previous crash report was too old. I restarted the computer and experienced it again after usb drive insertion. I hope crash report is shorter this time.

By the way, the crash report is still large, around 100 MB, even thought I restarted computer, is this normal for a crash report? Does it mean gnome-shell is high chatter and writing lots of warnings in background?

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

That new link is a different crash - bug 1714989 :)

[alperyilmaz (alperyilmaz)]

Uh oh! Then, is there anything I can do, to pinpoint the actual problem?

Is there any package/tool which I can run before inserting USB and collect information during freeze and restart of gnome-shell?

Running strace or similar tool for gnome-shell pid would do any help?

I'm afraid the crash reports for gnome-shell are huge and might contain noise originating from other bugs/problems. I thought; the info, trace, calls during the event only might help locate the problem may be..

Thanks.