groovy gnome-shell crash

[shemgp]

How I produced the crash:
* sudo service gdm3 stop
* launch Xorg as root
* open another tty
* export DISPLAY=:0
* gnome-shell
* CTRL-ALT-F1 to see gnome-shell, all I see is the mouse cursor blinks over a black background then stops blinking
* when I go back to the previous terminal I see:

$ gnome-shell
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Restarting gdm3 doesn't produce the crash file but only produces a black screen with mouse pointer blinking initially.

ProblemType: Crash
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.36.4-1ubuntu2~build1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.8.0-16.17-generic 5.8.0
Uname: Linux 5.8.0-16-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu45
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
Date: Thu Aug 27 12:19:38 2020
DisplayManager:

ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnome-shell
ExecutableTimestamp: 1597769943
GsettingsChanges: b'org.gnome.shell' b'favorite-apps' redacted by apport
InstallationDate: Installed on 2015-09-28 (1794 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 15.04 "Vivid Vervet" - Release amd64 (20150422)
ProcCmdline: gnome-shell
ProcCwd: /root
ProcEnviron:
 SHELL=/bin/bash
 LANGUAGE=en_PH:en
 LANG=en_PH.UTF-8
 TERM=linux
 PATH=(custom, no user)
RelatedPackageVersions: mutter-common 3.36.4-1ubuntu2
SegvAnalysis: Skipped: missing required field "Disassembly"
ShellJournal:
 -- Logs begin at Thu 2020-08-27 11:28:20 PST, end at Thu 2020-08-27 12:20:01 PST. --
 -- No entries --
Signal: 11
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: N/A

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Still waiting on a retrace so: Incomplete.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I am concerned about the number of packages from "unknown" origin in your Dependencies.txt. If any of those are causing this problem then we're wasting time... Can you check if the same problem happens in a live session?

http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

It looks like the crash analysis might have failed and won't progress any further. Please delete any files in /var/crash/ and then report new crashes as new bugs as they occur.

[shemgp (shemgp)]

It works with the daily-live/current iso. So I purge all packages until I get to the minimum ones (attached), removed almost all traces of gnome-shell and gdm3 from the file system, then run apt install ubuntu-desktop --install-recommends and when I reboot it works!

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

OK, in that case we never need to know what was wrong.

[shemgp (shemgp)]

Since people might get hit by this problem, I'm including a possible solution to it.

WARNING, it will remove most of your packages (and install some) and their configuration.

How to somewhat refresh Ubuntu by removing almost all packages and reinstalling ubuntu-desktop:

1. Download the attached file: leftpackages.list

2. Run the following lines in the folder where the leftpackagest.list file is located:

rm minimum.list
# make list of packages to remove which are not in leftpackages.list
dpkg --get-selections | while read line; do if ! cat leftpackages.list | grep "$line" > /dev/null; then echo "$line" | sed -e 's/\([^e]\)install/\1deinstall/' >> minimum.list; else echo "$line" >> minimum.list; fi; done
# mark those packages that should be removed
sudo dpkg --set-selections < minimum.list
# remove them
sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade
# remove their config
sudo aptitude purge '~c'

3. Install ubuntu desktop:

sudo apt install ubuntu-desktop --install-recommends