gnome-remote-desktop leads to a session crash inside qemu with virtio-vga

[Allan Vidal]

Impact
======
A minimal QEMU image of Ubuntu Desktop will fail to start after installing. This is because of a gnome-remote-desktop crash made worse because the gnome-remote-desktop service was always running. This update fixes the crash and stops gnome-remote-desktop from running when it's not in use.

We worked around this bug before the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS release by updating osinfo-db so that installs using GNOME Boxes and Virt Manager would do the right thing by default. But that didn't help for this particular test case.

Test Case
=========
1. On a jammy host, create a jammy guest:
$ qemu-img create -f qcow2 vm.qcow2 50G
$ qemu-system-x86_64 -accel kvm -cpu host -smp cpus=4 -m 3072 -device virtio-vga -display gtk,grab-on-hover=on -hda vm.qcow2 -cdrom [jammy ISO]

2. Install Ubuntu in that VM (minimal install), no problems are expected yet.

3. After the installation is concluded and the VM reboots, try to login using the Wayland session (it should be the default, no need to select anything). It will fail and bring you back to the login screen (apparently due to a gnome-shell crash; I don't think the details are relevant to the problem here).

What is expected: that both the Wayland and X11 sessions work out-of-the-box.

Workaround
===========
remove gnome-remote-desktop, and the Wayland session will work just fine in the conditions described above. This is why I'm reporting this issue in gnome-remote-desktop instead of Wayland or gnome-shell or qemu. I might be wrong though...

Extra information
=================
1. gnome-shell starts as expected if the X11 session is selected instead.
2. Alternatively, using the OpenGL enabled virtio-vga driver also makes it work in both the X11 and Wayland sessions:
$ qemu-system-x86_64 -accel kvm -cpu host -smp cpus=4 -m 3072 -device virtio-vga-gl -display gtk,gl=on,grab-on-hover=on -hda vm.qcow2

What Could Go Wrong
===================
See the master update bug report at LP: #1970662

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report. Could you add the 'journalctl -b -<n>' log from a session which showed the issue? where <n> is the number of system restarts since you triggered the bug

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

The only line in the journal to mention gnome-remote-desktop is

gnome-remote-desktop-daemon: libEGL warning: DRI2: failed to create dri screen

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-remote-desktop - 42.1.1-2ubuntu1

---------------
gnome-remote-desktop (42.1.1-2ubuntu1) kinetic; urgency=medium

  * Merge with Debian. Remaining change:
    - Lower gnome-control-center dependency to 41

gnome-remote-desktop (42.1.1-2) unstable; urgency=high

  * Don't automatically enable the systemd user service (LP: #1973028)
  * Add postinst to remove the automatic enabling of the user service
  * debian/control: Lower mutter dependency so that these fixes reach
    Testing sooner

gnome-remote-desktop (42.1.1-1) unstable; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release (LP: #1970662)
    - Fixes black screen with virtio on qemu (LP: #1971195)
  * Drop all patches: applied in new release
  * Depend on libmutter instead of gnome-shell | budgie-desktop
    - This is a more accurate dependency
  * Require libmutter 42.1 for Nvidia fixes
  * Depend on fuse3 (Closes: #998846) (LP: #1970411)

 -- Jeremy Bicha <email address hidden> Thu, 12 May 2022 15:21:47 -0400

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Hello Allan, or anyone else affected,

Accepted gnome-remote-desktop into jammy-proposed. The package will build now and be available at https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-remote-desktop/42.1.1-0ubuntu1 in a few hours, and then in the -proposed repository.

Please help us by testing this new package. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation on how to enable and use -proposed. Your feedback will aid us getting this update out to other Ubuntu users.

If this package fixes the bug for you, please add a comment to this bug, mentioning the version of the package you tested, what testing has been performed on the package and change the tag from verification-needed-jammy to verification-done-jammy. If it does not fix the bug for you, please add a comment stating that, and change the tag to verification-failed-jammy. In either case, without details of your testing we will not be able to proceed.

Further information regarding the verification process can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QATeam/PerformingSRUVerification . Thank you in advance for helping!

N.B. The updated package will be released to -updates after the bug(s) fixed by this package have been verified and the package has been in -proposed for a minimum of 7 days.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I confirmed that I am able to start the default Ubuntu (on Wayland) desktop session after installing gnome-remote-desktop 42.1.1-2ubuntu1 with the Test Case. Before installing that version, I would get a black screen when I attempted to log in using that session.

Unfortunately, the particular use case won't be fully fixed until we release a new Ubuntu 22.04.1 iso since Ubuntu desktop by default doesn't install non-security updates during the install.

I may be able to work around that by updating osinfo-db to do that. And then people installing using GNOME Boxes or virt-manager should be good.

[Łukasz Zemczak (sil2100)]

The verification of the Stable Release Update for gnome-remote-desktop has completed successfully and the package is now being released to -updates. Subsequently, the Ubuntu Stable Release Updates Team is being unsubscribed and will not receive messages about this bug report. In the event that you encounter a regression using the package from -updates please report a new bug using ubuntu-bug and tag the bug report regression-update so we can easily find any regressions.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package gnome-remote-desktop - 42.1.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
gnome-remote-desktop (42.1.1-0ubuntu1) jammy; urgency=medium

  * New upstream release (LP: #1970662)
    - Fixes black screen with virtio on qemu (LP: #1971195)
  * Drop all patches: applied in new release
  * Depend on libmutter instead of gnome-shell | budgie-desktop
    - This is a more accurate dependency
  * Require libmutter 42.1 for Nvidia fixes
  * Depend on fuse3 (Closes: #998846) (LP: #1970411)
  * Don't automatically enable the systemd user service (LP: #1973028)
  * Add postinst to remove the automatic enabling of the user service

 -- Jeremy Bicha <email address hidden> Tue, 17 May 2022 14:27:16 -0400