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Shino

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2015-02-01

Posts: 77

Windows randomly semi-freeze after latest system upgrade on gnome

Hi,

I'm using gnome and performed a system upgrade 2 days ago. See upgrade log here: https://pastebin.com/V4sMKq7j
Since then I'm experiencing hangs of my UI system. It mostly starts with the gnome-termial / gnome console app not being able to scroll anymore. I cannot use the close button in the window title bar as well. Just completely frozen but the content of the terminal window still works fine. I can type and see output. It just won't respond to mouse interaction anymore. Other windows work at the same time.
Similar things happen to chromium. Tabs freeze and I cannot scroll but everything else runs okay.

I use Gnome on Xorg (because in the past the wayland version had a lot of problems at least on my side). Yesterday, I had the problem that some applications were not able to produce any window at all. They started but I did not see any window. Especially media players like mpv or smplayer. In Gnome's exposé view I could see an "empty space" with the programs logo. I used ALT+F2 -> "r" to restart the session and it worked again.

Today I switched to Gnome on wayland but the problem with the random window freezes persists.

So far I noticed the problem with the following applications:
- kitty (a terminal program)
- chromium
- nautilus

The journal looks absolutely fine.

Any ideas which logs I could have look on?
Anyone else experiencing these issues?

kjozsa

Member

Registered: 2008-06-05

Posts: 166

Re: Windows randomly semi-freeze after latest system upgrade on gnome

Can confirm, I have the same issue on Wayland. Firefox remains responsive, but Electron based apps (Slack, etc), and vscode/intellij freezes as well.

Last edited by kjozsa (2025-05-29 14:13:37)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 63,964

Re: Windows randomly semi-freeze after latest system upgrade on gnome

mutter, gtk, gnome-stuff and glib2 were all updated…
As for what's likely happening, /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-server.conf                   

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option             "AllowDeactivateGrabs" "true" # also run setxkbmap -option grab:break_actions
    Option             "AllowClosedownGrabs" "true"
EndSection

Ctrl+Alt+Keypad-Divide will break the grab, Ctrl+Alt+Keypad-Multiply will kill the grabbing client.
nb. that those are for DEBUG-ONLY and pose a MAJOR SECURITY RISK on X11 because screenlockers work by grabbing the input, if you can just kill them they become moot.

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kjozsa

Member

Registered: 2008-06-05

Posts: 166

Re: Windows randomly semi-freeze after latest system upgrade on gnome

Maybe that helps hunting the issue down: when that happens, I open a new terminal with a keyboard shortcut, click to it, switch windows and apps unfreeze..

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 63,964

Re: Windows randomly semi-freeze after latest system upgrade on gnome

Because of your specific symptoms and https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chromi … er_Wayland - does electron run on xwayland?
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Waylan … plications

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

kjozsa

Member

Registered: 2008-06-05

Posts: 166

Re: Windows randomly semi-freeze after latest system upgrade on gnome

so it seems that all applications which freeze (slack/electron, intellij and vscode) run on XWayland, while other apps which behave well (terminator and firefox) are running natively..

brittyazel

Member

From: Davis, CA

Registered: 2013-05-11

Posts: 165

Re: Windows randomly semi-freeze after latest system upgrade on gnome

Yep, can confirm. I was wondering what was happening. Randomly my Chrome windows would stop being able to be interacted with and other apps would not be able to be moved. Hopefully this is fixed soon because it's really disruptive.

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I don't really know what I'm doing.

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 63,964

Re: Windows randomly semi-freeze after latest system upgrade on gnome

My money is on a stale mouse grab, see #3
Edit: usually this is caused by popup menus, you might also try to "export GDK_CORE_DEVICE_EVENTS=1" and see whether that prevents it (not sure whether that still does anything w/ gtk4, though)

Last edited by seth (2025-05-29 16:19:22)

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

brittyazel

Member

From: Davis, CA

Registered: 2013-05-11

Posts: 165

Re: Windows randomly semi-freeze after latest system upgrade on gnome

The appears to be a bug in Mutter 48.3, there are upstream bug reports:
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/4144
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/4143
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/mutter/-/issues/4138
https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-sh … te_2454384

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I don't really know what I'm doing.

Shino

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2015-02-01

Posts: 77

Re: Windows randomly semi-freeze after latest system upgrade on gnome

The appears to be a bug in Mutter 48.3

Thanks! I downgraded mutter to the last 48.2 build. Hopefully, this works out until the issue is fixed. Until now, everything seems to be running smoothly again.