Broken Gnome, Help needed

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Sat, 2022-09-10 at 18:53 +0200, Volker Wysk wrote:
> The offending programs were /usr/libexec/tracker-extract-3 (twice),
> /usr/libexec/gnome-session-binary, /usr/libexec/at-spi-bus-laucher and
> /usr/libexec/tracker-miner-fs-3. The "ProblemType" was "Crash" in all five
> cases, with signal 5.

Hi,

I don't know if it matters, but are you using x11 or wayland?

$ loginctl show-session $(loginctl show-user $(whoami) -p Display --value) -p Type --value

does show what is used.

"what is at-spi-bus-launcher? what is the relation to the gtk
applications like chromium etc..

    in wayland , after closing chrome it doesnt end this process, in
xorg it wasnt the case !!" -
https://www.reddit.com/r/linuxquestions/comments/6uw9ac/what_is_atspibuslauncher_what_is_the_relation_to/

Googling for tracker-extract-3 returns complains about it's performance.
It might be impossible to remove it, but disabling it seems to work:

https://www.linuxuprising.com/2019/07/how-to-completely-disable-tracker.html

Running

$ systemd-analyze blame

shows how long it takes for a service to start.

Without "blame" it displays how long startup needed to finish. It should
be quite fast:

$ systemd-analyze
Startup finished in 2.645s (kernel) + 4.103s (userspace) = 6.748s 
graphical.target reached after 3.682s in userspace.

This is an openbox, not a GNOME machine.

Maybe, but perhaps not, tracker-extract-3 is too slow and the other
errors are caused by the tracker issue. Just a shot in the dark.

Unless somebody hasn't got a better idea, I would try to
workaround/troubleshoot the issues by testing what happens, if x11 is
used and tracker is disabled.

This is just a wild guess, without real knowledge/experiences. I'm
always sceptic if GNOME is involved and I stay with x11, due to
prejudices related to wayland.

So again, I'm prejudiced, it's just how I would start troubleshooting,
but I could be completely mistaken. You might want to wait for better
replies.

FWIW the last time I run an Ubuntu live DVD with GNOME I didn't
experience an issue, but this was a while back, probably defaulting to
x11.

Regards,
Ralf