gnome-control-center crashes with segmentation fault on start

[Volker Wysk]

Hi.

When I start gnome-control-center, I get a segmentation fault:

(gdb) r
Starting program: /usr/bin/gnome-control-center
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".
[New Thread 0x7fffcaceb700 (LWP 12852)]
[New Thread 0x7fffca4ea700 (LWP 12853)]
[New Thread 0x7fffc2784700 (LWP 12854)]
[New Thread 0x7fffc195b700 (LWP 12855)]
[New Thread 0x7fffc0d27700 (LWP 12856)]
[New Thread 0x7fffabfff700 (LWP 12857)]
[New Thread 0x7fffab7fe700 (LWP 12859)]

Thread 1 "gnome-control-c" received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
__GI___libc_free (mem=0x100000000) at malloc.c:3103
3103 malloc.c: Datei oder Verzeichnis nicht gefunden.

I've installed the debug symbols, and get the attached backtrace.

My release is Ubuntu 18.04.3 LTS.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 18.04
Package: gnome-control-center 1:3.28.2-0ubuntu0.18.04.5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.0.0-29.31~18.04.1-generic 5.0.21
Uname: Linux 5.0.0-29-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.9-0ubuntu7.7
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Mon Sep 30 06:43:22 2019
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-07-17 (74 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS "Bionic Beaver" - Release amd64 (20190210)
ProcEnviron:
 TERM=xterm
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-control-center
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Volker Wysk (dost)]

Hi.

When you move away the file ~/.config/dconf/user, then it works again. That "user" file is automatically regenerated.

Bye
Volker Wysk

[Volker Wysk (dost)]

DO NOT DO THAT, what I've written in the previous comment (moving away ~/.config/dconf/user). It resets the configuration of many programs. Do this instead, to reset only the configuration of the Gnome Control Center:

gsettings reset-recursively org.gnome.ControlCenter

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Wait now... So if you reset the gnome-control-center dconf settings, it works and keeps working again?

It might be some kind of regression from the changes in version 1:3.28.2-0ubuntu0.18.04.5 which made it to bionic-updates recently. But in that case it would be important to know which kind of settings you had before it happened, to make it possible to reproduce the issue.

Did you possibly save those settings, and are able to reproduce the issue?

[Volker Wysk (dost)]

Am Montag, den 30.09.2019, 20:49 +0000 schrieb Gunnar Hjalmarsson:
> Wait now... So if you reset the gnome-control-center dconf settings,
> it
> works and keeps working again?

Yes.

> It might be some kind of regression from the changes in version
> 1:3.28.2-0ubuntu0.18.04.5 which made it to bionic-updates recently.
> But
> in that case it would be important to know which kind of settings you
> had before it happened, to make it possible to reproduce the issue.
>
> Did you possibly save those settings, and are able to reproduce the
> issue?

Yes, I did. And I'm able to reproduce the problem.

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Great! Then can you please temporarily copy the problematic file back to ~/.config/dconf/user, run this command:

dconf dump /org/gnome/control-center/ > gnome-control-center_dconf.txt

and submit the gnome-control-center_dconf.txt file as an attachment in a comment here.

[Volker Wysk (dost)]

See attachment.

Bye!

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

Thanks!

But "info-overview" is a perfectly fine value for the "last-panel" key. It represents Details -> About, and I'm not able to reproduce the crash using that value. (Tried in German too to make sure it's not a subtle translation issue.)

@Volker: Can you possibly - unlike me - trigger the crash by navigating to Settings -> Details -> About?

@Sebastien: Do you see something that I don't?

[Volker Wysk (dost)]

Am Dienstag, den 01.10.2019, 13:55 +0000 schrieb Gunnar Hjalmarsson:
> Thanks!
>
> But "info-overview" is a perfectly fine value for the "last-panel"
> key.
> It represents Details -> About, and I'm not able to reproduce the
> crash
> using that value. (Tried in German too to make sure it's not a subtle
> translation issue.)
>
> @Volker: Can you possibly - unlike me - trigger the crash by
> navigating
> to Settings -> Details -> About?

Yes, choosing "Details" in the list to the left, causes the crash. No
"-> About" needed. When doing so, "Details" becomes the last choosen
panel ("last-panel='info-overview'"), and is opened automatically when
starting gnome-control-center again. This then causes the crash to
occur again, this time immediately.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

The issue looks like the same as https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-control-center/issues/285

Looking at the Depends attachement,
libglib2.0-0 2.60.0-1ubuntu0.1~ubuntu18.04.1~ppa1 [origin: unknown]

That's likely you issue, you are using an outdated libglib from a ppa which doesn't include the fix for that issue