Nautilus "hangs" trying to generate thumbnail previews in folder

[Michael Noyce]

Binary package hint: nautilus

When using Nautilus in Ubuntu 9.10 I have noticed that it appears to "hang" when browsing folders that contain images and PDFs. When browsing a folder none of the image or PDF thumbnails are displayed and the GNOME throbber never stops animating, which suggests that Nautilus is trying to create the thumbnails, but cannot. The only way to view the contents of the folders is to disable the creation of thumbnails for other previewable files in the Nautilus preferences. I have only noticed this behavior in the the last few days and I am certain I had no such problems when I first installed Ubuntu 9.10.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Nov 10 00:04:45 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
Package: nautilus 1:2.28.1-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-14.48-generic
SourcePackage: nautilus
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-14-generic i686

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Please try to obtain a backtrace of the hang 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.

[jgonick (jgonick1969)]

I also posted this bug 397192, but it seems to fit here better.

It seems to me this is a problem that occurs when a file is moved. I've had the same issues with pdf, tga, etc.. All thumbnails will load fine if you move the file back to the original location. The problem tends to happen occasionally if you drag the file to the new location. Using cut and paste (as far as I can tell) doesn't cause the problem. (-still testing this since the problem occurs randomly) Once the problem occurs I can never get the file's thumbnail to work correctly no matter where I move it. (Unless I move it to the original location)

I've tried deleting ./thumbnail and it still persists. It will remake all thumbnails but still freeze on the files that were broken from a move.

[tsunetomo (tsunetomo-deactivatedaccount)]

This happens to me too.

[jsangil (jsangilve)]

I have the same problem. Sometimes nautilus doesn't load thumbnails of the files in a folder.
Usually the problem occurs when a file is moved from one directory to another.

[Anton Sukhonosenko (zoreslav)]

Also met the same issue. Happens when file is moved via GUI in any way - dragged or copy-pasted

[Michael Noyce (miken)]

It's good to hear from others also experiencing this problem. I guess I should clarify my original description to make it clear that Nautilus does not "hang", as in crash, it just seems to be forever trying to generate the thumbnails. Therefore, it would seem impossible to provide a backtrace. (Sorry, I could not find a better idiom to describe the problem.)

The comments made so far confirm my experiences. Every Sunday evening, I go through my Home directory and Downloads directory deleting and (perhaps more importantly) moving new files, in readiness for my weekly rsync to an external backup drive. It is then, that I notice the problem described. I normally have to reboot my laptop to get Nautilus to behave as expected.

[Dmitry Agafonov (dmitry-agafonov)]

The same for me. Karmic, amd64.

[brotkasten (brotkasten)]

Oppa ... sorry.
Here's the comment to the file i posted above:

The same problem for me. It seems the thumbnailer also hangs when invalid files are located in the respective directory. During some tests I had to mess around with files (PDFs) and created random data with PDF file signature preceeding. This effectively breaks the display of files for the whole directory in nautilus. I attached a test PDF file that should cause nautilus to hang.

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

Happening to me as well, folder has pdf, odp and xsl files.
Changing view to list shows the files but the busy spinner still shows.
I also dragged in some of these files.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you try the update on bug #454297? those issues seem quite similar and it could be already fixed by the current sru candidate

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

(you need to restart nautilus or your session after installing the upgrade there)

[Pat McGowan (pat-mcgowan)]

The SRU candidate in comment #12 resolved it for me

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

thanks, marking as duplicate from the other bug now