Bug 1170936

Summary:	Intermittent freezing in gnome classic
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7	Reporter:	adam winberg <adam.winberg>
Component:	gnome-shell-extensions	Assignee:	Florian Müllner <fmuellner>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Desktop QE <desktop-qa-list>
Severity:	unspecified	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	7.0	CC:	adam.winberg, mclasen, mdomonko, vbenes
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2015-11-19 07:14:11 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description adam winberg 2014-12-05 07:10:34 UTC

Description of problem:
We are experiencing some freezes with gnome in rhel7. Sometimes they last a couple of seconds, sometimes it lasts longer (>30min) We havent been able to locate exactly what causes these hangups, but our experience is that it happens a lot more in gnome classic than in 'regular' gnome.

Running gnome classic, gnome-shell flood our logs with thousands of lines per hour, of this type:
------------------
Dec 5 08:05:15 c20326 gnome-session: (gnome-shell:22295): Clutter-CRITICAL **: clutter_text_get_text: assertion `CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed
Dec 5 08:05:15 c20326 gnome-session: (gnome-shell:22295): Clutter-CRITICAL **: clutter_text_set_text: assertion `CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed
Dec 5 08:05:15 c20326 gnome-session: (gnome-shell:22295): Clutter-CRITICAL **: clutter_text_get_editable: assertion `CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed
Dec 5 08:05:15 c20326 gnome-session: (gnome-shell:22295): Clutter-CRITICAL **: clutter_text_get_text: assertion `CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed
Dec 5 08:05:15 c20326 gnome-session: (gnome-shell:22295): Clutter-CRITICAL **: clutter_text_set_text: assertion `CLUTTER_IS_TEXT (self)' failed
------------------

Since this only happens on gnome classic, I suspect that this might be relevant to our problem. And since it only happens on gnome classic, I suspect that it could be related to one or more of the default extensions included in that session.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
gnome-shell-3.8.4-45.el7.x86_64

How reproducible:
Unfortunately we dont know how to reproduce the freezing, so any help in debugging is welcome. Regarding the log spamming it is always reproducible when running gnome classic.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Start gnome classic session
2. Clutter-CRITICAL log messages should appear shortly in /var/log/messages
3.

Actual results:
Log spamming and intermittent freezes and crashes.

Expected results:
No freezing, no log spam

Additional info:

Comment 2 adam winberg 2014-12-05 08:00:17 UTC

I can add that I've tried to reproduce this in regular gnome session by activating the gnome classic extensions, but have not succeeded (that is, no freezes and no log spamming). So maybe its not the extensions after all.

Comment 3 Vladimir Benes 2014-12-05 08:20:51 UTC

Was Evolution in use when these freezes occurred? I see this from time to time but haven't been able to reproduce it. Logging into console and running pkill -9 gnome-shell always helps if freeze takes more time.

Comment 4 adam winberg 2014-12-05 08:40:20 UTC

Evolution was a suspect for a time, but it seems that hangups occur even when evolution is not running. With that said, we use evolution so it could be a part of the problem.

The workaround by killing gnome-shell works, but it also gives users a way to get around the screen lock and therefore feels like a security issue (killing gnome-shell unlocks screen without the need to provide password/smartcard pin).

Comment 5 adam winberg 2014-12-05 08:43:34 UTC

And if evolution was the culprit it is strange that it only happens in the gnome classic session, but I don't know what, if any, changes from regular gnome is applied to gnome classic aside from enabling some extensions.

Comment 6 Vladimir Benes 2014-12-05 09:27:23 UTC

(In reply to adam winberg from comment #5)
> And if evolution was the culprit it is strange that it only happens in the
> gnome classic session, but I don't know what, if any, changes from regular
> gnome is applied to gnome classic aside from enabling some extensions.

I've filed that already. Let's see if we can do something about it now, when more people hit these freezes. The original issue was not solved.

https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1104555

Comment 9 Vladimir Benes 2015-05-26 14:38:53 UTC

It seems to be fixed in 3.14. no freezes anymore even with heavy evolution usage.

Comment 12 errata-xmlrpc 2015-11-19 07:14:11 UTC

Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2015-2216.html