[glib2.0 2.67.4-1] Black screen on boot, login screen missing/delayed, eventually comes up without Wayland support (only Xorg sessions offered)

[Daniel van Vugt]

When I installed the glib2.0 2.67.4-1 packages I consistently encountered a black screen on boot. The login screen was missing/delayed but eventually comes up without Wayland support (only Xorg sessions offered).

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

When the login screen does finally come up (without Wayland support), the first log message is:

Feb 24 15:25:39 kab gnome-shell[1013]: JS ERROR: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.SessionManager: Timeout was reached
                                       _injectToMethod/klass[method]@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/core/overrides/Gio.js:290:25
                                       _makeProxyWrapper/<@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/core/overrides/Gio.js:267:17
                                       SessionManager@resource:///org/gnome/shell/misc/gnomeSession.js:36:12
                                       _init@resource:///org/gnome/shell/misc/systemActions.js:140:25
                                       getDefault@resource:///org/gnome/shell/misc/systemActions.js:28:22
                                       _init@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/status/system.js:18:31
                                       _init@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/panel.js:743:24
                                       _ensureIndicator@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/panel.js:1070:25
                                       _updateBox@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/panel.js:1081:34
                                       _updatePanel@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/panel.js:1027:14
                                       _init@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/panel.js:836:14
                                       _initializeUI@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/main.js:221:13
                                       start@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/main.js:162:5
                                       @<main>:1:47
Feb 24 15:25:39 kab gnome-shell[1013]: Execution of main.js threw exception: Script <main> threw an exception

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

It looks like this glib error always comes first:

Feb 24 15:24:48 kab gnome-shell[1013]: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
Feb 24 15:24:48 kab gnome-shell[1013]: g_signal_connect_data: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
...
Feb 24 15:25:39 kab gnome-shell[1013]: JS ERROR: Gio.IOErrorEnum: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gnome.SessionManager: Timeout was reached

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

I forced the warning to dump core and get:

Feb 24 15:50:49 kab gnome-shell.bin[1006]: invalid (NULL) pointer instance
Feb 24 15:50:49 kab org.gnome.Shell.desktop[1006]: GNOME Shell crashed with signal 5
Feb 24 15:50:49 kab org.gnome.Shell.desktop[1006]: == Stack trace for context 0x559976392170 ==
Feb 24 15:50:49 kab org.gnome.Shell.desktop[1006]: #0 5599765f6f18 i resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/main.js:187 (3d80d9cbee70 @ 52)
Feb 24 15:50:49 kab org.gnome.Shell.desktop[1006]: #1 5599765f6e68 i resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/main.js:162 (3d80d9cbefb0 @ 324)
Feb 24 15:50:49 kab org.gnome.Shell.desktop[1006]: #2 5599765f6de0 i <main>:1 (3d80d9c84100 @ 48)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Looks like gnome-shell is failing some basic GObject initialization. The only ABI/API break I can see in glib 2.67 is this: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/commit/334f6953364680ddc6c0d3da13fda1d92bf5379d

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Building GNOME 40 from git has the same bug, surprisingly:

  * Wayland instances hang and never start properly;
  * Xorg instances start immediately without error.

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Tracking in https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/issues/2332 although that one does not look familiar. One of its duplicates looks more familiar: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/3744

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Verified the fix from upstream works:

https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/merge_requests/1958.patch

It's coming in 2.67.5

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package glib2.0 - 2.67.5-2

---------------
glib2.0 (2.67.5-2) experimental; urgency=medium

  * debian/tests/control: Build-Depend on libc6-dev; the `pollable` test
    requires it. See [upstream MR !1977][0]. The upstream tests now rely on
    finding "libutil.so", which is in libc6-dev. Once that MR, or something
    like it, is merged, we can remove this test-dep as the runtime library
    will be being used.
    [0]: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/glib/-/merge_requests/1977

 -- Iain Lane <email address hidden> Tue, 02 Mar 2021 18:29:23 +0000