Left panel flickers like crazy during several seconds after deleting a bunch of files

[teo1978]

I have no idea if there are some requirements to trigger this issue, so I don't know whether you'll be able to reproduce it by just following my steps.

Anyway, I can reproduce it 100% of the times:

1. Open some folder in Nautilus
2. Select a few files. Make sure you select quite a few
3. Delete them by pressing the DEL key

Expected:
Nothing, a part from the files being deleted and disappearing from the displayed folder contents.

Observed:
During a few seconds after you hit Delete (I guess the time it takes to move the files to Trash and do some associated action, which by the way I don't know what it is that can take so long when deleting just a handful of files), the items in the list of shortcuts in the left panel (see screenshot) start flickering frantically, like crazy. It's pathetic.

It looks like the item called "Networks", just below "Trash", disappears and reappears several times very quickly, causing all the items below it to move down and up, hence the flickering.

Obviously it makes no sense.

Note: there's nothing wrong to be appreciated in my screenshot, it just indicates where the flickering happens.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: nautilus 1:3.18.4.is.3.14.3-0ubuntu6
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-135.161-generic 4.4.140
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-135-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_uvm nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.18
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Thu Sep 13 19:24:36 2018
GsettingsChanges:
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.window-state' b'sidebar-width' b'190'
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.window-state' b'geometry' b"'1044x767+374+165'"
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.list-view' b'use-tree-view' b'true'
 b'org.gnome.nautilus.list-view' b'default-column-order' b"['name', 'size', 'type', 'date_modified', 'date_accessed', 'owner', 'group', 'permissions', 'mime_type', 'where']"
InstallationDate: Installed on 2013-10-11 (1797 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 13.04 "Raring Ringtail" - Release amd64 (20130424)
SourcePackage: nautilus
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Do you still see that problem in newer Ubuntu versions?

[teo1978 (teo8976)]

> Do you still see that problem in newer Ubuntu versions?

I see it in 16.04 (as in the report) which is LTS and still supposed to be supported.

I haven't tested any later version.

I can't upgrade to 18.04 because of #1164016 which renders Nautilus completely unusable.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for nautilus (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Cibin Joseph (cibinjoseph)]

Affects me too.

OS: Ubuntu 16.04
Nautilus version: 3.14.3
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Thu Apr 4 2019
Possible Trigger: Large amount of files in Trash folder and then executing 'Empty Trash'.
Note: Flickering occurs during the time files are being removed from the ~/.local/share/Trash folder and a large amount of files in the Trash folder requiring longer times to remove probably makes it noticeable.

[Joseph (joseph-bradshaw)]

I am also suffering from this problem when deleting images (I delete around 2k and I can reproduce it immediately also). Occurs from network part of sidebar down. I have a video to show the effect.
https://youtu.be/lxMjDEEEKX4

OS: Ubuntu 16.04
Nautilus version: 3.14.3
Architecture: Intel 64 bit
Current Desktop: Unity
Date: 23/04/2019
Trigger: Deleting large amount of files with delete key through nautilus.
Note: Goes away for a minute before returning without having to delete files again.

[Joseph (joseph-bradshaw)]

I believe that I found a "solution", I don't know what caused it. After suffering with the problem for 2 weeks I discovered that emptying the trash the terminal way solved it. It seems Nautilus was having issues with something in the rubbish bin via the below command.

rm -rf ~/.local/share/Trash/*

Will post here again if the problem arises again.

[teo1978 (teo8976)]

How is this importance low???

The Nautilus UI remains unusable while this happens, which may take several seconds.

Also, when a user sees this happen after deleting some files (which clearly means Nautilus is "doing something" related to deleting the files), one can't be sure whether it's safe to go on doing other stuff (e.g. copying folders or uploading them somewhere) before the flickering ends, i.e. before nautilus is done doing whatever it's doing. I always wait just in case. Which again may be several seconds.

This is a huge usability issue.

[teo1978 (teo8976)]

> This is a huge usability issue.

and until we know exactly what is going on when the flickering happens, we don't know for sure whether it's more than a mere usability issue. So until that's known for sure, this should have importance high or critical.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could someone having the issue record a screencast showing the bug?

[teo1978 (teo8976)]

Why the f*** has nothing been done on this for over a year?

> Could someone having the issue record a screencast showing the bug?

Do you need a screencast because you are too lazy to read my description of the issue which is in my original report and perfectly describes what happens, or because you genuinely doubt that I might be making this up?

Or is my english really so bad that my description of the issue isn't clear enough? I think you can literally picture it in your head by reading it, but of course I'm biased because I wrote it myself and I've seen the issue. Yet I find it really difficult to believe that anyone familiar with Nautilus, even without having ever observed the issue, would have any difficulty in understanding what I describe.

By the way, now I found out that my Trash folder (in home/.local/share/Trash) was about 140 GB. There's obviously something wrong with that. I certainly haven't deleted 100 GB (nor even anywhere near one GB) in the last few months, and I assume the trash is supposed to get emptied automatically from time to time.
Now I did "empty Trash" from nautilus and during the whole time it took, it kept flickering just as described in the issue report as it usually happens when deleting folders with "many" files in them.

[teo1978 (teo8976)]

Please fix the importance.

"Importance Low" is clearly wrong (as I pointed out almost a year ago).

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Reporting upstream on https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/issues/ would be more useful than arguing over bug settings on this ticket...

[teo1978 (teo8976)]

When this happens, it often also happens that a process whose name I can't remember right now but that has the word "trash" in it, consumes an awful lot of CPU during the time the flickering is observed (which is sometimes several minutes).

FIX THE FUCKING IMPORTANCE.

[teo1978 (teo8976)]

> Reporting upstream on https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/nautilus/issues/ would be more useful than arguing over bug settings on this ticket...

In my experience, reporting anything upstream to GNOME is a fucking waste of time. Gnome developers have proven to be a bunch of idiots.

[teo1978 (teo8976)]

I think this was fixed upstream like four years ago:

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=763600

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you try on a newer Ubuntu version if you can confirm it's resolved?

[teo1978 (teo8976)]

No I can't.