Nautilus crashes while over-typing search term on remote smb file system

[Bob Briscoe]

==Impact==

nautilus crashes while typing the term to search a remote directory within an NT file system over the smb protocol. The problem may affect other remote file systems or protocols, but I have only tested these.

Repeatable.

==How to repeat==

1. Open Nautilus
2. In the sidebar, click Other Locations
3. Type smb://example/share into the 'Connect to server' field or select an existing share URI
4. Click Connect
5. Optionally, when the contents of the share appears, select any depth of sub-directories.
6. Click the search icon and type a search string
7. Once the search results have returned, without closing the search box, select the previous search term and over-type another search term.

Nautilus crashes.

Typically, prior to the window disappearing the graphics freezes within the search field showing both the previous and the current search terms on top of each other.

Often it is necessary to kill the nautilus process and/or reboot the smb daemon on the remote machine before being able to use the smb share again.

Before typing a second search term, if instead of over-typing, you delete the selection either i) with the <DELETE> key; or ii) clicking the (x) to clear the field; or iii) clicking the search icon twice to remove and reinstate the search field; it is possible to search for a second term without crashing.

It is possible that the crash depends on how fast the search term is typed, because nautilus starts searching as you type. I have tried to paste a search term over an existing term, which usually seems to work without crashing. On the other hand, I have had nautilus crash when typing a search term after having explicitly cleared the search field, but before nautilus has displayed the full contents of the directory again (about 150 files).

I have not had nautilus crash when over-typing the search field for a local file system, whether ntfs or ext3.

==Related bugs==

Bug #1795028 seems to be identical, and claims to have been fixed in package nautilus - 1:3.26.4-0~ubuntu18.04.2 but it does not appear to be fixed in 3.36.3 under Ubuntu 20.04. Hopefully this report explains more precisely how to reproduce the crash.

==Crash Reports==

A typical crash report from my system is here:
https://errors.ubuntu.com/oops/2dd9aa90-c462-11ea-9e47-fa163e102db1

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: nautilus 1:3.36.3-0ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-40.44-generic 5.4.44
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-40-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu27.3
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Sun Jul 12 21:03:59 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2020-06-03 (38 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 20.04 LTS "Focal Fossa" - Release amd64 (20200423)
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
usr_lib_nautilus:

[Bob Briscoe (m-bob-q)]

Another way to type into the search field over a remote share that makes nautilus crash: type the first character (incorrectly), backspace, then re-type.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please try to obtain a backtrace following the instructions at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash and upload the backtrace (as an attachment) to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

[Bob Briscoe (m-bob-q)]

I'm following the instructions to upload a backtrace. I've disable apport, but I've floundered on step 1 of Generating the backtrace.
    "1. Please ensure you have packages with debug symbols installed. You can do this by following the instructions at DebuggingProgramCrash."

Can you give more specific instructions for this case? I can't find a nautilus package with debug symbols installed.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Did you try to follow https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Debug%20Symbol%20Packages (which is referenced from the other pages).

You can also directly find the packages from the build referenced there
https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/1:3.36.3-0ubuntu1/+build/19437394

You can e.g download https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/1:3.36.3-0ubuntu1/+build/19437394/+files/nautilus-dbgsym_3.36.3-0ubuntu1_amd64.ddeb and install it using dpkg -i locally

[Bob Briscoe (m-bob-q)]

gdb output attached.

When overtyping the search field in nautilus within gdb, it didn't crash in the same way: the nautilus window hung (whereas without gdb nautilus crashed). So I did <CTRL>-C in gdb as instructed. But then I got [Wait / Force Quit] over the nautilus window and gdb had become unresponsive, with the nautilus process as a defunct child.

So, I killed gdb, ran it again, and this time, once I had got nautilus in its hung state, I completed the gdb output without using <CTRL>-C.

PS. I would like to give review comments on the DebuggingProgramCrash instructions. I had to guess what was meant on a number of points. Where's the appropriate place to post a review?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks, the backtrace indicates it's hitting and issue in libffi which usually indicates use of bindings ... do you have any nautilus extension installed? it's usually sign the issue is due to one of those (or due to nautilus-python)

What's the output of
$ dpkg -l | grep nautilus ?

> I would like to give review comments on the DebuggingProgramCrash instructions. I had to guess what was meant on a number of points. Where's the appropriate place to post a review?

Writing a post on https://discourse.ubuntu.com/ would be a nice starting point

[Bob Briscoe (m-bob-q)]

Att'd: nautilus extensions installed. The only one I'm aware of having explicitly installed is nautilus-image-converter (and of course nautilus-dbgsym).

[Bob Briscoe (m-bob-q)]

Do you want/need me to remove any of the extension packages, or can you take it from here?

Regarding where to post my feedback on the DebuggingProgramCrash instructions, I was really looking for some way to give feedback to the authors of the wiki page, not a discussion forum. I've emailed the person who last edited the page, but I was expecting a more systematic way to collect wiki feedback.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you remove nautilus-image-converter and see if it resolves your issue?

@wiki, I don't think there is a way to annotate/comment there no

[Bob Briscoe (m-bob-q)]

Done `sudo apt remove nautilus-image-converter`.
Still crashes the same (tried first without gdb, then with).
backtrace attached (produced as before).

[Bob Briscoe (m-bob-q)]

PS. I double-checked that there were no nautilus processes hanging around before removing nautilus-image-converter. And I double-checked that the features of nautilus-image-converter were no longer showing within nautilus before backtracing.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank, in fact it seems similar to bug #1835720 which is reported upstream as https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/-/issues/1072