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#1 2013-06-20 00:14:50

ebeyer
Member
Registered: 2013-06-20
Posts: 6

Gnome shell extensions stopped working.

My Arch install was working dandy with gnome shell 3.8 until just now.  Last night I ran a 'pacaur -Syu', let it complete and did a nice, legal shutdown.

Now when I log in, I get the basic gnome shell screen and no extensions.  Worse, all of my favorites have been set to their defaults.  Worse than that, gnome shell seems to
resist my attempts to add programs back to the favorites list (eg. Google Chrome); I see a notification that the application has been added to the favorites list but it disappears
shortly thereafter.

The only reference I can find to this problem is in the Arch wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GN … E_3_update).  I followed
the steps it suggests (even though I don't think I installed a new version of gnome shell).  And, indeed, I find "3.8" inside the metadata.json files for all of my extensions.  I
tried simple troubleshooting - uninstalling and reinstalling individual extensions, reinstalling gnome-shell-extensions, doing another update and yes, rebooting.  But as I can
find no other reference to this problem, I have no choice but to prevail on the collected wisdom of this forum to help me figure out what is broken and, if possible, how to
fix it without screwing something else up.

Thank you in advance.
EB

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#2 2013-06-20 02:26:01

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: Gnome shell extensions stopped working.

What updated?  Did you try downgrading?  How were your extensions installed?  Are those the only two things that changed? 

Mainly, you need to determine if this was caused by the update.  All your packages can be found in /var/cache/pacman/pkg, and the history of what has been updated can be found in the pacman.log.

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#3 2013-06-21 00:19:20

ebeyer
Member
Registered: 2013-06-20
Posts: 6

Re: Gnome shell extensions stopped working.

I don't know if my upgrades caused the problem.  But it's the only thing of note that happened between the time everything was fine with my gnome-shell and the time my extensions stopped working.  I'm not sure what else to put in my differential diagnosis.

What I'm hearing you say is I need to downgrade (or even remove?) whatever I installed or updated during the time in question and see if I can get my gnome-shell back to proper working order.  This I will attempt right after I post this message.

For the record, I will attach the entries from pacman.log between the times in question:
[2013-06-18 11:54] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S -y -u'
[2013-06-18 11:54] [PACMAN] synchronizing package lists
[2013-06-18 11:54] [PACMAN] starting full system upgrade
[2013-06-18 11:55] [PACMAN] upgraded gnome-icon-theme-symbolic (3.8.2.2-1 -> 3.8.3-1)
[2013-06-18 11:55] [PACMAN] upgraded libbsd (0.5.2-1 -> 0.5.2-2)
[2013-06-18 11:55] [PACMAN] upgraded libpeas (1.8.0-2 -> 1.8.1-1)
[2013-06-18 11:55] [PACMAN] upgraded pacman (4.1.1-1 -> 4.1.2-1)
[2013-06-18 12:25] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S hplip'
[2013-06-18 12:25] [PACMAN] reinstalled hplip (3.13.5-2)
[2013-06-18 14:36] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S dbus-python'
[2013-06-18 14:36] [PACMAN] reinstalled python2-dbus (1.2.0-1)
[2013-06-18 14:36] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S python-gobject'
[2013-06-18 14:36] [PACMAN] reinstalled python-gobject (3.8.2-1)
[2013-06-18 14:44] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S system-config-printer'
[2013-06-18 14:44] [PACMAN] reinstalled system-config-printer (1.4.1-3)
[2013-06-18 14:46] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S libcups'
[2013-06-18 14:46] [PACMAN] reinstalled libcups (1.6.2-3)
[2013-06-18 14:52] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S avahi nss-mdns'
[2013-06-18 14:52] [PACMAN] reinstalled avahi (0.6.31-9)
[2013-06-18 14:52] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET] ==> To enable IPv4 multicast DNS lookups, append 'mdns4' to the hosts line
[2013-06-18 14:52] [ALPM-SCRIPTLET]     in /etc/nsswitch.conf. Use 'mdns6' for IPv6 or 'mdns' for both.
[2013-06-18 14:52] [PACMAN] installed nss-mdns (0.10-5)
[2013-06-18 15:36] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S stellarium'
[2013-06-18 15:37] [PACMAN] installed stellarium (0.12.0-2)
[2013-06-18 16:49] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman -S -y -u'
[2013-06-18 16:49] [PACMAN] synchronizing package lists
[2013-06-18 16:49] [PACMAN] starting full system upgrade
[2013-06-18 16:49] [PACMAN] upgraded cantarell-fonts (0.0.12-1 -> 0.0.13-1)
[2013-06-18 16:49] [PACMAN] upgraded poppler (0.22.4-1 -> 0.22.5-1)
[2013-06-18 16:49] [PACMAN] upgraded poppler-glib (0.22.4-1 -> 0.22.5-1)

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#4 2013-06-21 00:45:52

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: Gnome shell extensions stopped working.

I'm saying bascially that you need to do some basic diagnostics on your system.  If you noticed the breakage immediately after an update, one of the biggest suspects will probably be something in that update.

Also you need to use code tags for output like that.

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#5 2013-06-21 01:01:50

ebeyer
Member
Registered: 2013-06-20
Posts: 6

Re: Gnome shell extensions stopped working.

I went through and downgraded all of the packages that were upgraded in that update and removed nss-mdns and stellarium which were new installs and rebooted.  No change in the behavior in the original post.  It may be worth noting that the radio buttons on some of the native gnome apps (gnome tweak tool and the native web browser) won't "take" - I click the button and it reverts when I unclick.  This suggests that my upgrade likely is not the culprit for my problem.

As for troubleshooting, I've gone through the wiki here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ge … leshooting, along with its linked pages and can find nothing relevant.  Maybe I missed something, but this seems focused on reporting problems appropriately and debugging segmentation faults.

The simplest thing would be to wipe the partition and start over.  But I worry I'd be missing an opportunity to learn by taking that shortcut.  If not guidance, then a general sense of direction in my investigation would be gratefully received.
EB

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#6 2013-06-22 01:45:17

ebeyer
Member
Registered: 2013-06-20
Posts: 6

Re: Gnome shell extensions stopped working.

I solved  the problem (sort of).

I discovered that creating a new user account eliminates the gnome extension issue in the new account.  No need to nuke anything important.

Thank you for your help, WonderWoofy.

EB

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#7 2013-06-22 02:48:57

WonderWoofy
Member
From: Los Gatos, CA
Registered: 2012-05-19
Posts: 8,414

Re: Gnome shell extensions stopped working.

Yeah, sorry, I unfortunately don't know very much about gnome-shell.  It is not something I use at all, and in fact I try to stay as far away from gconf as possible (though because I use pulseaudio, I do actually have it on my system).

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