I've only hit this problem on one laptop so far, some other laptops seem fine on battery power and others I haven't tested yet.
gnome-settings-daemon segfaults only when the laptop is running on battery. .xsession-errors gives nothing useful but dmesg shows:
[ 720.745446] gnome-settings-[3907]: segfault at 8 ip 00007fa28bc928c7 sp 00007fff770bfad0 error 4 in libpower.so[7fa28bc83000+19000]
[ 740.739024] gnome-settings-[4181]: segfault at 8 ip 00007f240e4418c7 sp 00007fffa06b6cc0 error 4 in libpower.so[7f240e432000+19000]
This bug shows up as an Oops screen in Gnome Shell and Gnome Fallback. I haven't tested Cinnamon but I would assume it would be the same.
I've found this Arch thread
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=127461
I've not found a Debian bug report that seems to cover it, so far. Still looking for solutions.
Steps to repeat:
Remove power lead from laptop
Log in
Wait for Gnome Oops (can happen immediately or after a few minutes).
Workaround:
Run laptop on mains power
Untested nasty workaround (from arch thread):
sudo rm /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon-3.0/libpower.so




