[SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

panther5482 · 2019-03-20 23:17:19

I did a routine update about a week ago on my Arch Linux system, and since then I've noticed that certain GTK3 apps (specifically ones that are Gnome-related) started to take ages to launch. It was particularly noticeable since I have an SSD in my system and things are usually very snappy. The apps that I have noticed displaying this behavior are file-roller, pavucontrol, GParted, and Transmission. Firefox and GIMP start at normal speed. I have not made any other significant changes to my system since then other than trying updating again today to fix the issue, to no avail. I understand this is a fairly nebulous issue so I will do my best to include whatever logs and system info I think are relevant but if anybody needs anything else let me know. Or just if you've experienced this on your system as well. Not sure if it's a bug in GLib, GTK3 or something of the sort.

uname -a: "Linux iusearchbtw 5.0.2-arch1-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Mar 14 18:47:49 UTC 2019 x86_64 GNU/Linux" (hilarious hostname, I know)
~/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini: https://pastebin.com/8RmebwyA
glxinfo (just because someone else I asked suggested looking at video drivers, I tried both KMS and Intel and neither of them changed anything): https://pastebin.com/87NjqMhR

Last edited by panther5482 (2019-04-11 19:13:51)

seth · 2019-03-21 08:06:47

Try to start one of them from an interactive shell and see whether it prints anything.
If not, strace it and see where it stalls.
Also quantify "forever", eg. 25 seconds would most likely be a dbus timemout.

panther5482 · 2019-03-22 05:32:08

Good idea, here is a log from execution in terminal to just when it appears. No messages are logged to terminal when I launch it like this. time says this process takes about 30 seconds, which is just enough to be rather irritating when coming from the normally zippy application times of an SSD. At around 60% of this log a bunch of resource not available messages start getting logged which goes until basically the end. I think this might be it? I have no idea. I'm not really good with reading these.

seth · 2019-03-22 08:47:27

It struggles to talk to the X11 server. Since there've been quite some problems w/ recent gtk3 versions (following the gnome update which dominates the forum…) I'd suggest to update the system (-Syu) and hope this is fixed (there've been three versions in the last two days alone)

Gimp still uses gtk2, thus you don't see the problem there. FF uses everything and the kitchen sink, therefore maybe sidesteps the cause in gtk3.

panther5482 · 2019-03-22 13:51:28

I just updated & rebooted, and it seems as though the bug still hasn't been fixed. I will wait till it does and check often. In the meantime, I've been replacing my GTK3 apps with Qt based ones (albeit without KDE dependencies, since I don't use KDE). Do you know of any equivalent for pavucontrol that either uses Qt or is terminal based?

EDIT: or gtk2. that works too.

Last edited by panther5482 (2019-03-22 13:52:01)

seth · 2019-03-22 14:02:33

I don't use PA at all.

Also I'd be more concerned about the issue at hand.
Check your xorg log for errors and try whether a new account and/or a trivial session (startx xterm) behave the same.
Especially get any login manager (GDM, lightdm, …) out of the way.

V1del · 2019-03-22 14:42:58

FWIW while I agree that you should focus on finding the actual cause for your GTK3 troubles. There literally exists pavucontrol-qt which is a Qt port developed by the LXQT team.

panther5482 · 2019-04-11 15:38:58

A month later, and this bug still occurs. Just ran yay -Syu this morning and there is no change. Looking at strace and trying a different GTK3 program, Quadrapassel, it seems like it hangs at the line "poll([{fd=12, events=POLLIN}], 1, 25000". Definitely some kind of timeout. Google doesn't really seem to help much.

V1del wrote:

FWIW while I agree that you should focus on finding the actual cause for your GTK3 troubles. There literally exists pavucontrol-qt which is a Qt port developed by the LXQT team.

I have been using that in the meantime. Thanks for the recommendation.

seth wrote:

I don't use PA at all.
Also I'd be more concerned about the issue at hand.
Check your xorg log for errors and try whether a new account and/or a trivial session (startx xterm) behave the same.
Especially get any login manager (GDM, lightdm, …) out of the way.

I have tried all of those and there is no difference. My main setup also doesn't launch thru a login manager either, I just have exec i3 in my xinitrc. This bug doesn't occur on my other Arch systems either.

seth · 2019-04-11 15:56:02

The poll is worthless w/o knowing what the fd stands for (will be assigned up in the strace)
In the other strace it's actually the PA socket, /run/user/1000/pulse - since PA is notorious for causing trouble, I'd actuyll just try to simply stop the service/uninstall PA altogether and see whether the issue remains.

Edit: " I just have exec i3 in my xinitrc" btw. does not provide a functional session, see the second note at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xinit#xinitrc

Last edited by seth (2019-04-11 15:57:06)

V1del · 2019-04-11 15:56:45

If you just have exec i3 in your .xinitrc that is wrong and could very well be contributing to your issue, you should ensure that proper scripts setting up your DBUS session are ran, note the second blue notebox

panther5482 · 2019-04-11 18:29:08

Thanks guys! Adding the if block suggested on the arch wiki page fixed it. Turns out there's a very important systemd user script thingy in /etc/xinit/xinitrc.d, and adding that to my xinitrc fixed it. BTW I did not have exec i3 in my config, rather, just "i3" and mpd and a few others. So it looks like I have a valid session and whatnot now. Again, thanks a lot! You have no idea how irritating this was!

(also, I'm new here - does anyone know how to mark this as solved?)

2ManyDogs · 2019-04-11 18:52:18

panther5482 wrote:

(also, I'm new here - does anyone know how to mark this as solved?)

Edit your first post and add [SOLVED] to the title.

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#1 2019-03-20 23:17:19

[SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

#2 2019-03-21 08:06:47

Re: [SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

#3 2019-03-22 05:32:08

Re: [SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

#4 2019-03-22 08:47:27

Re: [SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

#5 2019-03-22 13:51:28

Re: [SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

#6 2019-03-22 14:02:33

Re: [SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

#7 2019-03-22 14:42:58

Re: [SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

#8 2019-04-11 15:38:58

Re: [SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

#9 2019-04-11 15:56:02

Re: [SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

#10 2019-04-11 15:56:45

Re: [SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

#11 2019-04-11 18:29:08

Re: [SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

#12 2019-04-11 18:52:18

Re: [SOLVED] GTK3 Gnome apps take forever to launch

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