gnome-shell crashes when forcing a restart if applications are started on multiple workspaces

[Paul White]

What should happen:

With any number of applications running or workspaces enabled, gnome-shell should restart gracefully by using 'Alt F2 > r and enter'.

What does happen:

With just one workspace enabled, several applications can be started and gnome-shell can be restarted with 'Alt F2 > r and enter' without issue.

With multiple workspaces enabled, several applications can be started and gnome-shell can be restarted with 'Alt F2 > r and enter' provided all applications are started on the first workspace.

With multiple workspaces enabled, if several applications are started on different workspaces then gnome-shell will crash if restarted with 'Alt F2 > r and enter'. My last application was started on workspace 4.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.30.1-2ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.18.0-10.11-generic 4.18.12
Uname: Linux 4.18.0-10-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.10-0ubuntu13
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: GNOME
Date: Wed Oct 24 21:01:13 2018
DisplayManager: gdm3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-10-02 (22 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.10 "Cosmic Cuttlefish" - Beta amd64 (20181002)
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Firstly, please remove/disable all gnome-shell extensions as extensions are a common cause of bugs and crashes. You have a lot of them:

b'org.gnome.shell' b'enabled-extensions' b"['<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', 'applications-overview-tooltip@RaphaelRochet', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', 'suspend-button@laserb', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>', '<email address hidden>']"

If the problem persists without extensions then...

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It sounds like some part of the system has crashed. To help us find the cause of the crash please follow these steps:

1. Look in /var/crash for crash files and if found run:
    ubuntu-bug YOURFILE.crash
Then tell us the ID of the newly-created bug.

2. If step 1 failed then look at https://errors.ubuntu.com/user/ID where ID is the content of file /var/lib/whoopsie/whoopsie-id on the machine. Do you find any links to recent problems on that page? If so then please send the links to us.

3. If step 2 also failed then apply the workaround from bug 994921, reboot, reproduce the crash, and retry step 1.

Please take care to avoid attaching .crash files to bugs as we are unable to process them as file attachments. It would also be a security risk for yourself.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Thanks for your reply Daniel.

It's now looking as if the problems with the dash are a symptom of a crash rather than a cause. After rebooting and disabling all extensions I can restart gnome-shell with 'Alt F2 > r and enter' several times with a problem.

After starting some applications gnome-shell won't restart without crashing and sending me back to the log in screen.

Step 1 didn't lead to a new bug report being created.
Step 2 didn't show anything recent
Step 3 produced the following link:

https://errors.ubuntu.com/oops/1edb338e-d831-11e8-923b-fa163e102db1 but step 1 failed again.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

The above link is actually bug 1796607.

Interesting. Someone else mentioned yesterday that same crash.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Daniel, I would change the bug description but as I see someone else has also marked this bug as affecting them I'll leave that to you. :)

I now think that the dash to dock bugs are those that have have already been reported elsewhere and are nothing to do with the crash. I would not have restarted gnome-shell if I had not seen issues with the dock.

My most recent tests are telling me that if I reboot and start a number of applications, typically *four*, then gnome-shell will only crash if I start each of them on *different* workspaces. If I start four applications using the *same*a workspace then I can still restart gnome-shell with 'Alt F2 > r and enter'.

I'm marking the gnome-shell element of this report as "Confirmed" as another user has marked this bug report as affecting them. I don't think that the dash to dock element of this report is now relevant.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

After extensive testing I can now document how to reproduce the crash using four workspaces and four applications.

With just one workspace enabled, several applications can be started and gnome-shell can be restarted with 'Alt F2 > r and enter' without issue.

With multiple workspaces enabled, several applications can be started and gnome-shell can be restarted with 'Alt F2 > r and enter' provided all applications are started on the first workspace.

With multiple workspaces enabled, if several applications are started on different workspaces then gnome-shell will crash if restarted with 'Alt F2 > r and enter'. My last application was started on workspace 4.

I'm removing any references to the dock from this bug report as it was due to seeing issues which have been reported elsewhere that prompted me to restart gnome-shell.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

@plurtu - can you confirm revised bug description?

[Plurtu (plurtu)]

Only the Dash to Dock part of the original description affected me, I'm using Wayland so I can't restart gnome-shell.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Ok, thanks. I see you've already found a bug report regarding a dashtodock problem so best to deal with just the crash here which is reproducible by opening applications on separate workspaces.

[Plurtu (plurtu)]

I was unable to reproduce a crash following your steps on Xorg. I tried 15 applications launched across 15 workspaces and gnome-shell could be restarted without issues.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Paul,

Please repeat the steps from comment #2 so that we can try and verify if this really is a duplicate of bug 1796607.

I would like to see a second stack trace so we can be sure this is a duplicate, or to verify this is really a new bug.

[Paul White (paulw2u)]

Daniel, I've tried four times to create a new bug report. Although I get a prompt to advise that Ubuntu 18.10 has experienced an error and clicked on 'send' I just get returned to the terminal prompt.

Here is my /var/crash directory which shows a .crash file was generated just a few minutes ago:

drwxrwsrwt 2 root whoopsie 4096 Oct 29 07:34 ./
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Oct 2 09:33 ../
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root whoopsie 0 Oct 29 07:27 .lock*
-rw-r----- 1 paul whoopsie 4555151 Oct 29 07:34 _usr_bin_gnome-shell.1000.crash
-rw-rw-r-- 1 paul whoopsie 0 Oct 29 07:34 _usr_bin_gnome-shell.1000.upload
-rw------- 1 whoopsie whoopsie 0 Oct 29 07:37 _usr_bin_gnome-shell.1000.uploaded

Latest link on the error tracker:

https://errors.ubuntu.com/oops/6d3ef9d8-db4d-11e8-9fbe-fa163e6cac46

A simpler way for me to reproduce the crash is to go directly to workspace 4, start an application and restart gnome-shell. Crashes every time.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thanks Paul.

That link shows the same crash happened today and it is still bug 1796607. So I am satisfied this is now a duplicate of that.