causes freezeups with zsh related to .histfile.LOCK

[Rai]

This problem only happens to me when I select the Ubuntu WM, not under Cinnamon. I see it in gnome-terminal.

After I enter a command, like "ls" or "cd" into gnome-terminal and press Enter, the desktop icons blink out for a split-second, and while they do, the command does not finish.

This makes it annoying for me to work in the command-line, since I'm used to most programs responding immediately.

From my experience, it looks like when a program is already running, like Vim, and I ask it to do a disk operation, this "blinking out" and "freezing" does not happen.

I'm attaching a video of this happening.

I've noticed this line in journalctl -b:

Mai 10 13:24:55 agentydragon kernel: mce: CPU3: Package temperature/speed normal
Mai 10 13:24:55 agentydragon kernel: mce: CPU1: Package temperature/speed normal
Mai 10 13:24:55 agentydragon kernel: mce: CPU2: Package temperature/speed normal
Mai 10 13:24:55 agentydragon kernel: mce: CPU0: Package temperature/speed normal
Mai 10 13:24:56 agentydragon wpa_supplicant[1011]: wlp4s0: CTRL-EVENT-SIGNAL-CHANGE above=1 signal=-67 noise=9999 txrate=130000
Mai 10 13:25:07 agentydragon gnome-shell[5836]: Error getting desktop unix mode: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Fehler beim Holen der Informationen für Datei »/home/agentydragon/.histfile.LOCK«: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
Mai 10 13:25:10 agentydragon gnome-shell[5836]: Error getting desktop unix mode: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Fehler beim Holen der Informationen für Datei »/home/agentydragon/.histfile.LOCK«: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
Mai 10 13:25:12 agentydragon gnome-shell[5836]: Error getting desktop unix mode: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Fehler beim Holen der Informationen für Datei »/home/agentydragon/.histfile.LOCK«: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
Mai 10 13:25:14 agentydragon dbus-daemon[3143]: [session uid=1000 pid=3143] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.Tracker1' unit='tracker-store.service' requested by ':1.1' (uid=1000 pid=3139 comm="/usr/libexec/tracker-miner-fs " label=">
Mai 10 13:25:14 agentydragon systemd[3110]: Starting Tracker metadata database store and lookup manager...
Mai 10 13:25:14 agentydragon dbus-daemon[3143]: [session uid=1000 pid=3143] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.Tracker1'
Mai 10 13:25:14 agentydragon systemd[3110]: Started Tracker metadata database store and lookup manager.
Mai 10 13:25:14 agentydragon dbus-daemon[3143]: [session uid=1000 pid=3143] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.Tracker1.Miner.Extract' unit='tracker-extract.service' requested by ':1.1' (uid=1000 pid=3139 comm="/usr/libexec/tracker-mi>
Mai 10 13:25:14 agentydragon systemd[3110]: Starting Tracker metadata extractor...
Mai 10 13:25:14 agentydragon tracker-extract[49035]: Set scheduler policy to SCHED_IDLE
Mai 10 13:25:14 agentydragon tracker-extract[49035]: Setting priority nice level to 19
Mai 10 13:25:14 agentydragon dbus-daemon[3143]: [session uid=1000 pid=3143] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.Tracker1.Miner.Extract'
Mai 10 13:25:14 agentydragon systemd[3110]: Started Tracker metadata extractor.
Mai 10 13:25:15 agentydragon gnome-shell[5836]: Error getting desktop unix mode: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Fehler beim Holen der Informationen für Datei »/home/agentydragon/.histfile.LOCK«: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
Mai 10 13:25:18 agentydragon gnome-shell[5836]: JS ERROR: TypeError: fileItem is undefined
                                                _updateDesktopIfChanged@/usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/desktop-icons@csoriano/desktopManager.js:349:17
                                                _monitorDesktopFolder/<@/usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions/desktop-icons@csoriano/desktopManager.js:311:94
Mai 10 13:25:18 agentydragon gnome-shell[5836]: Error getting desktop unix mode: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Fehler beim Holen der Informationen für Datei »/home/agentydragon/.viminfo.tmp«: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
Mai 10 13:25:21 agentydragon gnome-shell[5836]: Error getting desktop unix mode: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Fehler beim Holen der Informationen für Datei »/home/agentydragon/.histfile.LOCK«: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
Mai 10 13:25:25 agentydragon systemd[3110]: tracker-extract.service: Succeeded.
Mai 10 13:25:25 agentydragon gnome-shell[5836]: Error getting desktop unix mode: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Fehler beim Holen der Informationen für Datei »/home/agentydragon/.histfile.LOCK«: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
Mai 10 13:25:37 agentydragon gnome-shell[5836]: Error getting desktop unix mode: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Fehler beim Holen der Informationen für Datei »/home/agentydragon/.histfile.LOCK«: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden
Mai 10 13:25:48 agentydragon tracker-store[49001]: OK
Mai 10 13:25:48 agentydragon systemd[3110]: tracker-store.service: Succeeded.
Mai 10 13:25:59 agentydragon gnome-shell[5836]: Error getting desktop unix mode: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Fehler beim Holen der Informationen für Datei »/home/agentydragon/.histfile.LOCK«: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden

The gnome-shell error with .histfile.LOCK stood out to me.
The German means "error fetching information for file >>/home/agentydragon/.histfile.LOCK<<: file or directory not found".

I had a suspicion that this is some interaction between gnome-shell (and maybe the desktop-icons extension).

So I just tried disabling the desktop icons extension, and disabling it removed this "freezing and icons flickering".

I suspect that what might be happening might be some sort of race between the desktop icons and zsh - maybe like:

- I enter command into zsh
- zsh creates a histfile lockfile in ~
- notification is sent to desktop icons that there's a new file
- meanwhile zsh writes the command into the histfile and gets rid of the lockfile
- desktop icons get the notification but are unhappy that the file does not exist anymore

lsb_release -rd:

  Description: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS
  Release: 20.04

apt-cache policy gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons:

  gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons:
    Installiert: 20.04.0-1
    Installationskandidat: 20.04.0-1
    Versionstabelle:
   *** 20.04.0-1 500
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/main amd64 Packages
          500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal/main i386 Packages
          100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons 20.04.0-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-29.33-generic 5.4.30
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-29-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sun May 10 13:36:31 2020
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2018-03-07 (794 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.10 "Yakkety Yak" - Release amd64 (20161012.2)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: gnome-shell-extension-desktop-icons
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-04-25 (14 days ago)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. The issue seems similar to bug #1812883 , is your Desktop view pointing to your user directory? Or is zsh generating any writting in ~/Desktop?

[Rai (agentydragon)]

Hi. I don't like having folders like Desktop, Pictures, Videos, etc. in my home, so I have overrides in ~/.config/user-dirs.dirs:

XDG_DESKTOP_DIR="$HOME"
XDG_DOWNLOAD_DIR="$HOME/downloads"
XDG_TEMPLATES_DIR="$HOME"
XDG_PUBLICSHARE_DIR="$HOME"
XDG_DOCUMENTS_DIR="$HOME"
XDG_MUSIC_DIR="$HOME"
XDG_PICTURES_DIR="$HOME"
XDG_VIDEOS_DIR="$HOME"

So basically my desktop dir is the same as my home dir (/home/agentydragon), so it makes sense that desktop icons would be interested in .histfile.LOCK appearing in there.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for confirming, then it's a duplicate of bug #1812883, your configuration makes it more inconvenient because the userdir changes more often than the desktop would