Arch Linux

darthpenguin

Member

Registered: 2011-09-16

Posts: 113

[SOLVED] Gnome/Wayland/Xorg crashing after package install

Not sure if this is the correct place to post this. Please let me know.

I'm using Arch 64-bit with the linux-lts kernel on a ThinkPad E560. I'm using GNOME and GDM.

When I install or upgrade packages from the gnome-terminal using pacman or yaourt my desktop will sometimes crash. This happens frequently but not every time I upgrade or install packages. On the occasions when  I'm using GNOME with Xorg this crash behaves as follows; system seems to lockup, titlebar on windows vanish, gnome topbar and dash (using dash-to-dock) disappear, after a few seconds desktop reloads and I can continue using the system. When the crash occurs when I'm using Wayland the system will freeze and after a few seconds I'm dropped into the GDM login screen (my session is gone). I reinstalled Arch from scratch on my laptop and this is still happening. So not sure what is going on.

Can someone point me to a log file that might help me identify what is crashing? Not sure if it's something with GNOME or GDM or one of my extensions. I doubt it's pacman since yaourt is causing the same problem. I'm trying to do more troubleshooting but it is hard to reproduce since it does not happen every time a package is upgraded/installed.

Thx.

Last edited by darthpenguin (2017-11-22 20:44:40)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,789

Re: [SOLVED] Gnome/Wayland/Xorg crashing after package install

Check your journal.

There's a known problem with the current LTS kernel and intel gpu's, switch to the stock kernel, or/and  follow https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=231972 I'm inclined to think this is the same issue, but without logs we can't be certain.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,561

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Gnome/Wayland/Xorg crashing after package install

I doubt it's pacman since yaourt is causing the same problem.

I also doubt it is pacman itself, but for other reasons.  Your reasoning is quite flawed: yaourt is just a wrapper for pacman (when you run yaourt, yaourt runs pacman), so this is most certainly not evidence that pacman isn't at fault.

If you have any of your own pacman hooks, or have made pacman an alias, or done any other sort of custom intervention with pacman, then those would be very good suspects to look into.

Last edited by Trilby (2017-11-22 15:00:52)

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"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

darthpenguin

Member

Registered: 2011-09-16

Posts: 113

Re: [SOLVED] Gnome/Wayland/Xorg crashing after package install

I doubt it's pacman since yaourt is causing the same problem.

I also doubt it is pacman itself, but for other reasons.  Your reasoning is quite flawed: yaourt is just a wrapper for pacman (when you run yaourt, yaourt runs pacman), so this is most certainly not evidence that pacman isn't at fault.

If you have any of your own pacman hooks, or have made pacman an alias, or done any other sort of custom intervention with pacman, then those would be very good suspects to look into.

I have done no customization to pacman other than the mirror list and turning on multilib. Your reasoning makes sense. Didn't realize yaourt was just a wrapper for pacman ... but now that you say it I guess it would be. Thanks for the clarification.

Last edited by darthpenguin (2017-11-22 15:03:35)

darthpenguin

Member

Registered: 2011-09-16

Posts: 113

Re: [SOLVED] Gnome/Wayland/Xorg crashing after package install

Hey Thanks V1del. I'll switch to the other kernel and see if that works.

Question: How can I change the kernel grub is booting? I don't want to just uninstall the linux-lts and update grub. I feel like I should be able to make a small change in /etc/default/grub to tell it to boot linux instead of linux-lts then run grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg. I'm just not sure what exactly to change. Also not sure if it is required to run mkinitcpio -p linux after changing kernels.

Thanks.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,789

Re: [SOLVED] Gnome/Wayland/Xorg crashing after package install

If you rerun grub-mkconfig it should automatically create entries for each of your kernels. mkinitcpio -p linux will be automatically ran when you install the kernel.

darthpenguin

Member

Registered: 2011-09-16

Posts: 113

Re: [SOLVED] Gnome/Wayland/Xorg crashing after package install

Oh, I get it. I can choose from grub when booting. If the lts kernel is the first entry and lts-fallback is second then I can change the GRUB_DEFAULT from 0 to 2 which will select the 3rd entry (stock kernel). okay, thanks. if I notice the crashing stopped I'll mark this as solved.

darthpenguin

Member

Registered: 2011-09-16

Posts: 113

Re: [SOLVED] Gnome/Wayland/Xorg crashing after package install

I have updated a few times today. Don't usually update so frequently but I wanted to test to see if it would crash. It hasn't crashed yet. I'm convinced that changing from linux-lts kernel to stock kernel has fixed the problem.

Thanks.