Comment 52 for bug 1782984

I'm also having this problem. I reported it on Lubuntu-Users mailing list.[1] Walter referred me to this bug report. I am running strace[2]. I am pretty darn sure this began with 17.04.[3]

I mentioned on the Lubuntu mailing list that I had developed a "feeling" (after living with it for almost a year) that the crashes had something to do with clicking too fast, overloading something like that. But, that could be my imagination. (However, since I began running strace, it hasn't happened. My imagination is now believing strace is slowing me down and "pacing" that problem for me. Time will tell. If it doesn't happen for 2 months, I will be convinced it's a timing problem -- something happening too fast.).

I also mentioned to Walter that I installed Gimp 2.10.x when I upgraded to Lubuntu 18.04 (fresh install.). It began crashing in the same way PCManFM did (freeze, window asks if I should wait or kill it). Lately it's just disappearing (no freeze), and I believe PCManFM was doing that too. So, my imagination was also linking this to the PCManFM crash. But... my rational mind kept saying "2.10 is a big change. It must be that."

I haven't used GIMP much (or at all) since starting strace. I used it (2.10.8) yesterday. The first thing I noticed was that the strace (for PCManFM) was very active. I thought I had seen strace quiesce when I clicked into an application window (like the Chrome browser). But, when I clicked into the GIMP window, it's like the PCManFM logging activity *doubles*.

So, that reinforced my imagination that the GIMP 2.10 crashes are related to PCManFM's. Fortunately, GIMP crashed (disappeared). I CTRL-break'ed out of the strace within 3-6 seconds.

Maybe I'm barking up the wrong tree. But... I wanted to make that log available if someone speaks that language. I tailed the last 500 lines (21 seconds) and am attaching it here. Remember: the console's STDERR/OUT was being captured too. SO, there may be a meaningful message from that too.

[==== BREAKING NEWS! I was trying to get the size of that file by clicking "properties" (or just trying to get to that point), and PCManFM crashed. I will post a subsequent message with that strace output in a few minutes. I will go ahead and post this one (the GIMP crash while strace'ing PCManFM) in case it could shed any light. Again, the only reason I thought it could be related is because GIMP causes a lot of strace output for PCManFM. ====]

[1] https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/lubuntu-users/2018-November/012151.html
[2] pidof pcmanfm
kill <pid from previous command>
strace -Ff -tt pcmanfm --desktop 2>&1 | tee strace-pcmanfm.log
[3] I used to upgrade Lubuntu every release, but stopped at some version I don't recall. That was when the PCManFM crashes started. I believe it was 17.04 because I was waiting for LTS (18.04), had gotten used to opening a terminal window and executing "pcmanfm --desktop &disown" all the time. I noticed before 18.04 that I wasn't getting updates anymore. From the Ubuntu version list it looks like 17.04 went out of support at about the time I think I stopped being updated. (It could have been 16.10. But, I don't think the updates had stopped for that long.).