Cannot log in from UI

[Eyal Lebedinsky]

On 06/10/2023 20.15, Eyal Lebedinsky wrote:
> A friend has a problem where after entering their password it goes back to the login screen.
> 
> Looks like gnome-shell is crashing. Looking at syslog I find the following:

Ops, my bad, I missed the first (very important) line which I broke into a readable list (replacing all the #012):

Oct  6 16:44:53 peter-ThinkPad-SL510 gnome-shell[2105]: JS ERROR: TypeError: malformed UTF-8 character sequence at offset 0
_unpack_variant at resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/overrides/GLib.js:197:9
_unpack_variant at resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/overrides/GLib.js:237:12
_unpack_variant at resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/overrides/GLib.js:237:12
_init/this.Variant.prototype.deep_unpack at resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/overrides/GLib.js:275:9
_loadNotifications at resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/notificationDaemon.js:824:27
wrapper at resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/_legacy.js:82:22
_init at resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/notificationDaemon.js:795:9
wrapper at resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/_legacy.js:82:22
_Base.prototype._construct at resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/_legacy.js:18:5
Class.prototype._construct/newClass at resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/_legacy.js:114:32
_init at resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/notificationDaemon.js:892:39
wrapper at resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/_legacy.js:82:22
_Base.prototype._construct at resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/_legacy.js:18:5
Class.prototype._construct/newClass at resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/_legacy.js:114:32
_initializeUI at resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/main.js:186:26
start at resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/main.js:133:5
@<main>:1:31

> Oct  6 16:44:53 ThinkPad-SL510 gnome-shell[2105]: Execution of main.js threw exception: Script <main> threw an exception
> Oct  6 16:44:53 ThinkPad-SL510 org.gnome.Shell.desktop[2105]: (EE)
> Oct  6 16:44:53 ThinkPad-SL510 org.gnome.Shell.desktop[2105]: Fatal server error:
> Oct  6 16:44:53 ThinkPad-SL510 gnome-session[2074]: gnome-session-binary[2074]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
> Oct  6 16:44:53 ThinkPad-SL510 gnome-session-binary[2074]: Unrecoverable failure in required component org.gnome.Shell.desktop
> Oct  6 16:44:53 ThinkPad-SL510 gnome-session-binary[2074]: WARNING: App 'org.gnome.Shell.desktop' exited with code 1
> Oct  6 16:44:53 ThinkPad-SL510 org.gnome.Shell.desktop[2105]: (EE) failed to read Wayland events: Connection reset by peer
> Oct  6 16:44:53 ThinkPad-SL510 org.gnome.Shell.desktop[2105]: (EE)
> Oct  6 16:44:53 ThinkPad-SL510 gdm3: GdmDisplay: display lasted 2.384283 seconds
> 
> The system was running mostly as originally installed with no significant changes. They are not power users.
> No issues of note until recently and they are unaware of any unusual events leading to this situation.
> 
> This is 18.04. I did an update/upgrade with no improvement.
> 
> As an aside, It was a Wayland system. We started a rescue boot where we did nothing but now the system runs X...
> 
> TIA

What I mostly need is an understanding of the error, which package is responsible and how to fix it.
- I know that it is not user related.
- update/upgrade did not help.
- I reinstalled the whole 'gnome' which did not improve the situation.

What other information should I provide to help here?

TIA

-- 
Eyal Lebedinsky (eyal at eyal.emu.id.au)