Bug 912303 - GNOME Shell failed to start after package upgrades
Summary: GNOME Shell failed to start after package upgrades
Keywords:
Status: CLOSED EOL
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: gnome-shell
Version: 19
Hardware: x86_64
OS: Linux
urgent
high
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Owen Taylor
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2013-02-18 10:55 UTC by Milan Bouchet-Valat
Modified: 2015-02-17 14:46 UTC (History)
8 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed: 2015-02-17 14:46:55 UTC
Type: Bug


Attachments (Terms of Use)
:0-greeter.log (2.14 KB, text/plain)
2013-02-18 10:56 UTC, Milan Bouchet-Valat
no flags Details
Upgraded packages that broke the Shell (40.27 KB, text/plain)
2013-05-08 18:50 UTC, Milan Bouchet-Valat
no flags Details
Downgraded packages that did not fix the Shell crash (2.28 KB, text/plain)
2013-05-08 18:52 UTC, Milan Bouchet-Valat
no flags Details
Downgraded packages that fixed the Shell crash (4.63 KB, text/plain)
2013-05-08 18:54 UTC, Milan Bouchet-Valat
no flags Details

Description Milan Bouchet-Valat 2013-02-18 10:55:38 UTC
This is a weird bug I just experienced today after applying package updates that had been pending since February 6th. GNOME shell would not start, I was greeted with the fail whale instead of the GDM greeter, and when using startx under my user account.

The log (see attached file) contained this:
failed to create drawable
[...]
(gnome-shell:1855): St-WARNING **: Failed to load /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/noise-texture.png: Unrecognized image format (approx. translation)
(gnome-shell:1855): St-CRITICAL **: _st_create_texture_material: assertion `src_texture != COGL_INVALID_HANDLE' failed


So I downgraded everything that could be related to graphics (Xorg, mutter, libdrm, cairo, pixman), with no luck. I then downgraded more packages chosen sometimes at random, and eventually succeeded. The batch of "yum downgrade" that fixed the bug was this one:

Feb 18 10:54:08 Installed: gvfs-1.14.2-2.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:10 Installed: pulseaudio-libs-2.1-5.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:12 Installed: pulseaudio-2.1-5.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:13 Installed: fftw-libs-long-3.3.3-4.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:14 Installed: fftw-libs-double-3.3.3-4.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:14 Installed: fftw-libs-single-3.3.3-4.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:15 Installed: fftw-libs-quad-3.3.3-4.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:16 Installed: pulseaudio-utils-2.1-5.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:19 Installed: xulrunner-17.0.1-1.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:24 Installed: firefox-17.0.1-1.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:24 Installed: pulseaudio-module-x11-2.1-5.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:25 Installed: fftw-libs-3.3.3-4.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:25 Installed: fftw-3.3.3-4.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:26 Installed: pulseaudio-module-bluetooth-2.1-5.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:27 Installed: pulseaudio-module-gconf-2.1-5.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:27 Installed: pulseaudio-libs-glib2-2.1-5.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:29 Installed: gvfs-afp-1.14.2-2.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:29 Installed: gvfs-obexftp-1.14.2-2.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:30 Installed: gvfs-archive-1.14.2-2.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:30 Installed: gvfs-smb-1.14.2-2.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:31 Installed: gvfs-fuse-1.14.2-2.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:32 Installed: gvfs-afc-1.14.2-2.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:32 Installed: gvfs-gphoto2-1.14.2-2.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:33 Installed: harfbuzz-0.9.7-1.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:34 Installed: dyninst-8.0-1.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:37 Installed: gcr-3.6.2-2.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:39 Installed: colord-0.1.28-1.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:41 Installed: gnome-abrt-0.2.4-1.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:42 Installed: shared-mime-info-1.0-7.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:44 Installed: ltrace-0.7.2-1.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:44 Installed: libipa_hbac-1.9.4-3.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:45 Installed: pulseaudio-gdm-hooks-2.1-5.fc18.x86_64
Feb 18 10:54:45 Installed: pulseaudio-libs-2.1-5.fc18.i686
Feb 18 10:54:46 Installed: harfbuzz-0.9.7-1.fc18.i686

The funny thing is, upgrading these packages again did not reintroduce the bug, so I'm sorry to say I cannot reproduce the problem. But still, it might be worth a look given it makes the system completely unusable.

Comment 1 Milan Bouchet-Valat 2013-02-18 10:56:21 UTC
Created attachment 698824 [details]
:0-greeter.log

Comment 2 Dan Mashal 2013-03-23 03:46:34 UTC
This is causing yum update to fail on MATE as well due to the package being unsigned. Please fix this ASAP.

Comment 3 Colin Walters 2013-03-25 14:21:37 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> This is a weird bug I just experienced today after applying package updates
> that had been pending since February 6th. GNOME shell would not start, I was
> greeted with the fail whale instead of the GDM greeter, and when using
> startx under my user account.
> 
> The log (see attached file) contained this:
> failed to create drawable
> [...]
> (gnome-shell:1855): St-WARNING **: Failed to load
> /usr/share/gnome-shell/theme/noise-texture.png: Unrecognized image format
> (approx. translation)
> (gnome-shell:1855): St-CRITICAL **: _st_create_texture_material: assertion
> `src_texture != COGL_INVALID_HANDLE' failed

This looks like gdk-pixbuf's cache being broken.

> The funny thing is, upgrading these packages again did not reintroduce the
> bug, so I'm sorry to say I cannot reproduce the problem. But still, it might
> be worth a look given it makes the system completely unusable.

And yeah, if some package reran the gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders, it would start working again.

Comment 4 Colin Walters 2013-03-25 14:22:04 UTC
Hi Dan,

(In reply to comment #2)
> This is causing yum update to fail on MATE as well due to the package being
> unsigned. Please fix this ASAP.

Either you're commenting in the wrong bug, or you're very confused.

Comment 5 Milan Bouchet-Valat 2013-03-26 13:14:33 UTC
Colin, this indeed looks like a plausible theory. So:
1) Any idea where the corruption can come from (upgrade went fine, no power outage or problems like that)?
2) Is that sensibility to gdk-pixbuf loaders bug specific to the Shell?
3) What can be done so that such a small bug can break the whole desktop?

Comment 6 Dan Mashal 2013-05-08 06:49:33 UTC
(In reply to comment #4)
> Hi Dan,
> 
> (In reply to comment #2)
> > This is causing yum update to fail on MATE as well due to the package being
> > unsigned. Please fix this ASAP.
> 
> Either you're commenting in the wrong bug, or you're very confused.

Probably. Is there a link in upstream gnome bugzilla to use for tracking on this? Is this a confirmed bug upstream? Is there a plan to fix this for Fedora 19 upgrades?

Comment 7 Adam Williamson 2013-05-08 15:57:09 UTC
FWIW, on my last 'yum update', Shell crashed shortly after, respawned itself, and ran fine thereafter. I didn't see any kind of 'system non-functional' stuff.

Comment 8 Adam Williamson 2013-05-08 18:01:53 UTC
Milan: can you tell from your yum history what packages were included in the initial update that broke this? I think we need to track down what update could be busting the pixbuf cache, and see if it's a general issue or something flukey that just hit you.

Comment 9 Adam Williamson 2013-05-08 18:02:34 UTC
Dan, there's zero point proposing this as blocking F*18* beta :)

if it's a general issue for f18->f19 upgrades it could possibly block F19, but let's get that straight first.

Comment 10 Milan Bouchet-Valat 2013-05-08 18:50:56 UTC
Created attachment 745359 [details]
Upgraded packages that broke the Shell

Adam: attached is the excerpt of /var/log/yum.log corresponding to the "yum upgrade" call that broke the Shell. The problem is, this was a very large upgrade (one of the reasons I do not apply upgrades very often is precisely that I cannot afford frequent breaks... :-). If you exclude texlive, there are about 300 updated packages.

Comment 11 Milan Bouchet-Valat 2013-05-08 18:52:30 UTC
Created attachment 745370 [details]
Downgraded packages that did not fix the Shell crash

And here is the list of packages I downgraded without fixing the problem, in case it may be useful.

Comment 12 Milan Bouchet-Valat 2013-05-08 18:54:00 UTC
Created attachment 745373 [details]
Downgraded packages that fixed the Shell crash

...and, for completeness, the ones that fixed the problem, as given in the description above. As Colin suggested, this downgrade probably just triggered a cache rebuild, so these packages may not be directly related to the crash.

Comment 13 vschmidt 2013-06-27 18:33:13 UTC
I had just logged as root using Ctrl+Alt+F2 and ran ">yum update". The rest of the packages were updated and for some reason the problem with the Gnome login screen disappeared. Yum update did not work in my personal account.

I think the problem occurred during the updating procedure using the Software Manager, which I think is a very bad task. You cannot mark/unmark all the packages... And if you update several packages simultaneously the task break without any warning...

Thank you, Milan.

Comment 14 Tim-Philipp Müller 2014-09-30 23:29:59 UTC
I would just like to add that I had the same problem with gdm + gnome-shell being without icons and gnome-shell pretty much oopsing immediately on login.

This was indeed fixed by running sudo gdk-pixbuf-query-loaders --update-cache, as Colin suggested (thanks!).

In my case the cache corruption was likely caused by the kernel locking up in the middle of a dist-upgrade (sic).

Comment 15 Fedora End Of Life 2015-01-09 17:41:41 UTC
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