[solved] Gnome3 crashes seriously when opening a PDF file

[roger64]

Hi

I thought I had a fairly good lmde64 install, straight from the last iso. After some days of use, however, I discovered a particular sensibility to PDF.

When I open a PDF file with Evince (I do not have Acrobat Reader), it's opening, briefly, then I see a nice screen, with a sad computer icon face in the center and the following text:

Oh! mince! Quelque chose s'est mal passé.
Un problème est survenu et le système ne peut pas se récupérer.
Déconnectez-vous et essayez à nouveau.

If this is not clear for you, well, I tried to reboot using Grub "mode dépannage" (repair mode). No way to get the system working, but this time I had a sad computer icon face in the center and the following text: (we are making progress...)

Oh no! Something has gone wrong
A problem has occured and the system can't recover.
Please log out and try again.

Which basically is an appropriate translation to the above text.

No way to get the system working again. I had to reinstall my system using Clonezilla (five minutes). I did it already five times so I can say that this bug is solidly in place in my system.

Now my system looks like being in perfect order but I know that if I try to open a PDF, it will crash again.
I would like to squash this bug and make a nice bug report and I am looking for expert advice (with not too many PDF openings..).

Other informations
I tried to check pdf file with an antivirus (Clamav): no problem
I tried to open a pdf file with Acrobat Reader9 : crash of Gnome 3 (Cinnamon)

Mate is unconcerned by this. It works normally and I can open any pdf files using Acrobat Reader without trouble.
Just Gnome 3 is gone with the wind.

[äxl]

Evince (I do not have Acrobat Reader)

You could also try Atril. A fork of Evince that MATE uses.

No way to get the system working again. I had to reinstall my system using Clonezilla (five minutes).

Is it possible to create a boot medium from the clone? Or run the clone from a VM? Just to avoid having to play it back every time.

[roger64]

This is a real Gnome3 bug because Evince and Acrobat Reader work with Mate. I can open PDF with Mate session.

For the time being, I will follow on with this version de LMDE64. When the LMDE64 final will be out, I'll make a reinstall on a nearby partition. But it's a pity I cannot give more information on this because it's a real nasty bug.

The only thing I can say for sure is that it concerns only Gnome 3 and it happens only when I try to open a PDF. It should be possible to do better.

[äxl]

There are ways to use a backup image for debugging:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical-to-Virtual
http://qemu-buch.de/de/index.php/QEMU-K ... to-Virtual There's link for English (Google Translate)

[roger64]

Thanks for your info but that's beyond my technical abilities. I only know VB.

I can provoke a Gnome3 crash and then provide information about it coming from Mate which is not concerned by these kind of crashes. I wish to do it once for obvious reasons. So, if someone could give me the most useful commands to join to a bug report, I could execute them.

[roger64]

Now things are getting interesting. I did install the new stable LMDE64 iso on another partition. I installed the main packages I use, nothing rare, like a new Java, VirtualBox, Wine, Nvidia drivers using dkms method... Then I tried to open a PDF file using Cinnamon.

I got a crash of Gnome3. When I tried to launch it again, the session was killed in some seconds.

With good old Mate, everything is OK as usual. I am going to spend sometime on it but I really wish to kill this bug.

[roger64]

Well I decided to reinstall a third time and to check opening a PDF file after each step in order to find the culprit, because there must be one.
So far, proved innocents:
Nvidia drivers (and suppression of nouveau)
Wine install using Lamaresh repo
Java install using duinsoft repo
Multisystem install using liveusb repo
Scid using Synaptic
BUT
when I reinstalled the Cinnamon applets I had a crash !!!!
I installed, among others Recent Documents applet which was twice present. Maybe it is installed by default? Anyway, as soon as I activate it I had a crash and an unrecoverable crash as that: no way to restart Cinnamon, only Mate...

I came back to the main lmde64 partition. Suppressed the two recent@cinnamon applets (one is installed by default in /usr/share/cinnamon/applets and I had mistakenly installed the second in ~/.local/cinnamon/applets). Try to open a PDF file: no problem.

So this is solved but I have yet to understand what happens. Maybe there is a nasty conflict between the two brother applets, maybe the recent documents applet himself is the problem. I will report on it anyway.

Take care.

[sirscratchalot]

Thank you, thank you, thank you Roger64, I had the exact same problem after opening a PDF cinnamon refused to work.
However it does not seem to be a conflict of multiple applets in my case, I had only one install of recent documents. Removing it restored my Cinnamon desktop to working order where nothing else could.
You've kept me from distro hopping once again!