synaptic package manager crashes on search action

[Jurgen Schellaert]

Whenever I press the ENTER key in synaptic to launch a package search, the application crashes immmediately.

When I start synaptic from the command line, I get this after every crash:
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

More details can be found from dmesg, which prints the same two lines for each crash:
synaptic[15666]: segfault at 7f048e79a4c0 ip 00007f00864090f3 sp 00007ffd72ad1400 error 4 in libapt-pkg.so.5.0.2[7f00862b0000+1b3000]
[ 1785.886327] Code: 48 8b 45 18 48 8b 04 d0 48 83 c4 08 5b 5d c3 0f 1f 84 00 00 00 00 00 55 53 48 89 fd 48 89 f3 48 83 ec 08 48 8b 06 48 8b 4e 08 <8b> 10 48 8d 04 d5 00 00 00 00 48 29 d0 48 8b 51 60 48 8d 04 c2 0f

[Jurgen Schellaert (jurgen-schellaert-j)]

It looks like the crash is caused by the Erlang PPA. As long as I keep it disabled, search works perfectly.

[Daniil Sobol (sobol-daniil)]

I can confirm this behaviour. Although it's not Erlang PPA but rather erlang-solutions repository:
https://packages.erlang-solutions.com/ubuntu bionic contrib
I also found similar bug in APT (https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=810622). And tried to run synaptic with different cache directory to rule out broken cache: synaptic -o Dir::Cache=/tmp/nonexisting/. It doesn't help.
Stack trace is:
#0 0x00007ffff7b73733 in pkgRecords::Lookup(pkgCache::DescFileIterator const&) () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libapt-pkg.so.5.0
#1 0x00005555555ab8ac in ()
#2 0x00005555555d83cf in ()
#3 0x00005555555db73d in ()
#4 0x000055555559ad9d in ()
#5 0x00007ffff655810d in g_closure_invoke () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#6 0x00007ffff656afce in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#7 0x00007ffff6573685 in g_signal_emit_valist () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#8 0x00007ffff6574578 in g_signal_emit_by_name () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#9 0x00007ffff6558346 in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#10 0x00007ffff657396f in g_signal_emit_valist () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#11 0x00007ffff657409f in g_signal_emit () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#12 0x00007ffff7030add in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-3.so.0
#13 0x00007ffff7030b35 in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-3.so.0
#14 0x00007ffff655810d in g_closure_invoke () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#15 0x00007ffff656b09e in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#16 0x00007ffff6573685 in g_signal_emit_valist () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#17 0x00007ffff657409f in g_signal_emit () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#18 0x00007ffff702ef90 in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-3.so.0
#19 0x00007fffefc21dae in ffi_call_unix64 () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libffi.so.6
#20 0x00007fffefc2171f in ffi_call () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libffi.so.6
#21 0x00007ffff6558ced in g_cclosure_marshal_generic_va () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#22 0x00007ffff6558346 in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#23 0x00007ffff657396f in g_signal_emit_valist () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#24 0x00007ffff657409f in g_signal_emit () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#25 0x00007ffff70eba36 in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-3.so.0
#26 0x00007ffff655b008 in g_cclosure_marshal_VOID__BOXEDv () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#27 0x00007ffff6558346 in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#28 0x00007ffff657396f in g_signal_emit_valist () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#29 0x00007ffff657409f in g_signal_emit () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgobject-2.0.so.0
#30 0x00007ffff70e8d0e in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-3.so.0
#31 0x00007ffff70ea2fb in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-3.so.0
#32 0x00007ffff70ecf5e in () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-3.so.0
#33 0x00007ffff70ba721 in gtk_event_controller_handle_event () at /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgtk-...

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Heck Fy (shitpoet)]

I confirm it too. Just wanted to add my synaptic started to crash only after Debian 10 was released, may be it is somehow connected to it? Also if I search by just "Name" and not by "Name and description" - then the app doesn't crash.

[Pawel Kraszewski (linuxpedia.pl)]

I can confirm that disabling erlang-solutions repo fixes crash in search.

Ubuntu Budgie 19.04 / Synaptic 0.84.5

[StSav012 (stsav012)]

I've just bumped into the bug with dropbox repo. It's still for Ubuntu 18.10, although I'm running 19.10. That's just the newest version.