Bug 2372896 - After Fedora upgrade, Thunar freezes when unmounting an external USB disk.
Summary: After Fedora upgrade, Thunar freezes when unmounting an external USB disk.
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED UPSTREAM
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: Thunar
Version: 42
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
unspecified
medium
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Kevin Fenzi
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2025-06-15 13:51 UTC by Nolan
Modified: 2026-01-05 00:09 UTC (History)
5 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2026-01-05 00:09:31 UTC
Type: ---
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)

Description Nolan 2025-06-15 13:51:27 UTC
After recent upgrade of Fedora 42, Thunar hangs whenever an external USB disk is unmounted normally. Normal Thunar functionality resumes after about 60 seconds.

This problem occurs on Fedora 41 as well, so it doesn't seem to be version dependent. After updating to the current software level in either version, Thunar freezes as described.

Unfortunately, I cannot identify a specific time when updates caused this behavior, but I believe it was sometime within the past 2 months.

I tried using 'dnf versionlock' and re-running the upgrade to identify a specific set of packages that might be causing the Thunar conflict, but was unsuccessful.

This problem does NOT exist in the GNOME environment.

I did not test to see if this problem exists in the Fedora Xfce environment.

This also seems to be Cinnamon version independent. It happens on Cinnamon 6.4.8 and 6.4.9. I think it is unrelated to Cinnamon per se.


Reproducible: Always

Steps to Reproduce:
After a Fedora upgrade using 'dnf upgrade':

-Open Thunar in the Cinnamon environment

-Insert, mount and open an external USB disk

-Unmount the external disk using any method


Actual Results:
Thunar hangs for about 60 seconds before accepting using input, even though the disk is unmounted almost immediately.

Expected Results:
Thunar should accept user input immediately, even when the external disk is unmounting.

Additional Information:
Running thunar from the command line produces the following warning, but I don't believe this is directly related to this problem.

$ thunar
(thunar:2604): thunar-WARNING **: 20:29:30.927: Name 'org.freedesktop.FileManager1' lost on the message dbus.



This does not seem to be a Thunar bug per se, but perhaps a configurationn problem caused by an upgrade script.


The following thunar packages are installed:

# dnf list thunar*

Installed packages
Thunar.x86_64                   4.20.2-2.fc42 fedora
thunar-archive-plugin.x86_64    0.5.3-2.fc42  fedora
thunar-volman.x86_64            4.20.0-2.fc42 fedora

Available packages
Thunar.i686                     4.20.2-2.fc42 fedora
Thunar-devel.i686               4.20.2-2.fc42 fedora
Thunar-devel.x86_64             4.20.2-2.fc42 fedora
Thunar-docs.x86_64              4.20.2-2.fc42 fedora
thunar-media-tags-plugin.x86_64 0.5.0-2.fc42  fedora
thunar-sendto-clamtk.noarch     0.08-4.fc42   fedora
thunar-vcs-plugin.x86_64        0.2.0-35.fc42 fedora

Comment 1 Nolan 2025-06-15 15:05:02 UTC
Correction:

It is only when unmounting an external disk using Thunar that it hangs. Thunar does not freeze when unmounting using GNOME Disks or the command line.

Comment 2 Nolan 2025-06-17 21:05:22 UTC
This problem affects Thunar unmounting of internal drives as well as external and is independent of filesystem type.

After going through a b-tree testing methodology, I've identified the problem as the upgrade of 'libnotify' from version 8.3 to 8.6:

 libnotify                       x86_64    0.8.6-1.fc42                     updates           122.2 KiB
   replacing libnotify           x86_64    0.8.3-5.fc42                     fedora            128.3 KiB

This is the version of 'libnotify' currently in Rawhide, but it has been pushed out to both Fedora 42 and Fedora 41. The higher version works fine in GNOME and KDE, but causes the problem described above for Thunar in the Cinnamon environment.

The workaround is to lock 'libnotify' before doing any system upgrades, as follows:

dnf versionlock add libnotify

Comment 3 Nolan 2025-08-07 20:36:35 UTC
Is there a reason why no one seems interested in pursuing this problem?

Is there a more appropriate place to file this bug?

This is a problem with unmounting volumes from Thunar in the Fedora Cinnamon environment, with any version of 'libnotify' above 8.3.x

Comment 4 Kevin Fenzi 2025-08-07 21:12:51 UTC
Well, I can't speak for my co-maintainers, but for me... I maintain this package in my "spare" time, and I have had none of that lately. I did mark it to look at when I do. 

You could try filing this upstream... https://gitlab.xfce.org/xfce/thunar/-/issues

Comment 5 Nolan 2025-08-08 06:16:34 UTC
Trouble is, I'm not convinced that this is an Xfce Thunar problem per se, as Thunar is fine in every other environment -- including Fedora GNOME, Fedora KDE Plasma and Fedora Xfce. This is specific to Thunar in the Fedora Cinnamon environment, and only with the 'libnotify' 8.6.x upgrade.

This could be a Cinnamon problem or a 'libnotiify 8.6' problem.

Comment 6 Nolan 2025-08-08 15:28:06 UTC
The latest version of Linux Mint Cinnamon is using 'libnotify-bin' version 8.3 and will likely encounter this problem when they upgrade to 'libnotify-bin 8.6'. I have opened the following bug report with them:

https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/13026

Comment 7 Michael Webster 2025-08-11 22:05:39 UTC
Hi, I've fixed the Cinnamon issue as well as tried to figure out what's happening here:

https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/issues/13026#issuecomment-3177008544

Comment 8 Kevin Fenzi 2026-01-03 20:09:22 UTC
Great detective work there. :)

So, this was fixed (or at least worked around) in cinnamon now, right?
So we can close this? Or is there more we can do here?

Comment 9 Nolan 2026-01-04 16:56:31 UTC
It looks like this bug has *not* been fixed.

All is well on the latest version of Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.2, but they are still using the old versions of libnotify. For all other current implementations of Cinnamon, which have upgraded libnotify, Thunar still hangs unmounting volumes in the Cinnamon environment. This includes LMDE7, Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora.

The workaround still is to lock libnotify at version 0.8.3, but this does not survive a Fedora upgrade since libnotify 0.8.3 does exist in the Fedora 43 repositories.

The other workaround for Cinnamon, of course, is to not use Thunar to unmount anything. I woud reiterate that Thunar works fine in every other DE that I've looked at, including GNOME and KDE Plasma.


*** Linux Mint 22.2 output ***

# aptitude search libnotify
i   libnotify-bin                           - sends desktop notifications to a notification dae
p   libnotify-bin:i386                      - sends desktop notifications to a notification dae
p   libnotify-dev                           - sends desktop notifications to a notification dae
p   libnotify-dev:i386                      - sends desktop notifications to a notification dae
p   libnotify-doc                           - sends desktop notifications to a notification dae
i   libnotify4                              - sends desktop notifications to a notification dae
p   libnotify4:i386                         - sends desktop notifications to a notification dae
p   ruby-libnotify                          - Ruby bindings for libnotify using FFI            


# apt show libnotify-bin
Package: libnotify-bin
Version: 0.8.3-1build2


# apt show libnotify4
Package: libnotify4
Version: 0.8.3-1build2

***

Comment 10 Michael Webster 2026-01-04 17:06:42 UTC
The issue that causes the hang in Cinnamon is fixed in 6.6. Unfortunately Mint 22.2 and LMDE7 are still on 6.4. LMDE7 should see an update within a month or so.

https://github.com/linuxmint/cinnamon/commit/361526c10bd537b54230fa044ab0fc0ec4c04c39

Comment 11 Nolan 2026-01-05 00:09:31 UTC
> The issue that causes the hang in Cinnamon is fixed in 6.6

In that case, this bug should probably be closed, with advice that Cinnamon be upgraded to 6.6 in the Fedora repositories. There is nothing more to be done.

Closing the bug (upstream).

Thanks, Michael!


Note You need to log in before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.