gnome-software from xps 13 9365 with Dell-oem running Ubuntu 16.04 segfaults

[Jill Manfield]

installing Dell Oem.
Running update/upgrade
sudo -s
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade -y

Then running gnome-software results in the GUI loading but after 10 seconds it crashes and you see a segfault.

I tried information in +Bug/1798236 but U16 does not have a later version of gnome-software. I also saw a bug similar that mentioned we need packagekit 1.12 but U16 doesn't bundle that only U19 does. I tried download a package for testing purposes but it does not resolve the issue. I saw another case within our Dell database that suggests appstream might cause the crash so I removed appstream and did and update/upgrade again. It stopped the crash initially but not on reboot. I also added the gnome3 repository in hopes I could get the updates that way and that did not help either.

It is unclear what is needed to resolve this issue. Please let me know what logs you need me to provide to look into this further.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: gnome-software 3.20.5-0ubuntu0.16.04.11
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.15.0-47.50~16.04.1-generic 4.15.18
Uname: Linux 4.15.0-47-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.18
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Thu Mar 21 19:11:27 2019
DistributionChannelDescriptor:
 # This is a distribution channel descriptor
 # For more information see http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DistributionChannelDescriptor
 canonical-oem-somerville-xenial-amd64-rebase-20170712-0
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-03-04 (17 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04 "Xenial" - Build amd64 LIVE Binary 20170712-02:34
SourcePackage: gnome-software
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[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.

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

attaching now

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

Is this related too https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-software/+bug/1781996

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

Is there any updates on this bug? Anything you need me to collect?

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

Any updates on this bug? What is needed from the customer or Dell to isolate this?

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you install the debug pacakges as described on the wiki? The issue looks somewhat similar to bug #1778135

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

I loaded the default debug symbols and I see Reading symbols from gnome-software... (no debugging symbols found)...done. I then tried to load all and still I receive no debug symbols. It is not that I didn't load them, it is I have no idea what the debug symbol for gnome-software is. Can you confirm what packages I need to load?

I loaded xserver-xorg-core-dbg
I also downloaded the script and ran
sudo bash ./list-symbols-packages-v2.sh -p 2386 (pid for yelp)
It loaded but the symbols for gnome-session are missing.

Please advise.

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

I googled and found you could get more information with running the gnome-software --verbose. Attaching that file in case it helps. There was no gnome-software-dbg or gnome-software-dbgsym to install and or download, I checked.

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

Backtrace is not working since there are no debug symbols example attached

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

dmesg -T | grep seg
[Wed Apr 3 14:52:31 2019] pool[18867]: segfault at ffffffffffffffb8 ip 00007f8bf01e1b97 sp 00007f8bca5b0938 error 5 in libappstream-glib.so.8.0.6[7f8bf01c5000+42000]
[Wed Apr 3 14:57:24 2019] pool[25609]: segfault at ffffffffffffffb8 ip 00007fa7ef7d3b97 sp 00007fa7ccae3938 error 5 in libappstream-glib.so.8.0.6[7fa7ef7b7000+42000]
[Wed Apr 3 14:59:40 2019] pool[25764]: segfault at ffffffffffffffb8 ip 00007ff8e3d7fb97 sp 00007ff8a320c938 error 5 in libappstream-glib.so.8.0.6[7ff8e3d63000+42000]

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

you can maybe try to catch the segfault using apport and use apport-retrace on the file from /var/crash

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

I ran backtrace with --verbose so hopefully that helps as well attaching

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

backtrace

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

backtrace

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

backtrace

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

Valgrind output

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

apport logs

[Jill Manfield (jlmanfield)]

Customer installed U18.04 Dell OEM and that works as expected. We can drop the severity. I installed the Base Dell OEM image to confirm the issue. When I first booted the issue was not there. Then when I loaded the updates/upgrades and rebooted the segfaults came back. I have nothing else installed on the image. Let me know if you need me to redo the valgrind, apptrace, and or backtraces. Looks like this issue is tied to U16