Ubuntu (gnome) freezes temporarily upon login

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Hi Sebastien,

I think https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=706688 could be used as the upstream bug.

Regards

Your log shows an 11 second delay each time this happens:

Nov 06 13:57:46 hostname gnome-session-binary[3428]: WARNING: Could not get session path for session. Check that logind is properly installed and pam_systemd is getting used at login.
Nov 06 13:57:57 hostname unity-settings-[3399]: failed to turn the kbd backlight off: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: No such interface 'org.freedesktop.UPower.KbdBacklight' on object at path /org/freedesktop/UPower/KbdBacklight

and

Nov 06 15:38:07 hostname gnome-session-binary[3428]: WARNING: Could not get session path for session. Check that logind is properly installed and pam_systemd is getting used at login.
Nov 06 15:38:18 hostname unity-settings-[3399]: failed to turn the kbd backlight off: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownMethod: No such interface 'org.freedesktop.UPower.KbdBacklight' on object at path /org/freedesktop/UPower/KbdBacklight

HI Da

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for the analysis, can I do something by myself to prevent that delay?

Regards

I don't know how the KbdBackLight interface is meant to work. It seems to be defined in package 'upower'. And that error seems to be from code in unity-settings-daemon where it fails to change the keyboard backlight brightness, because something isn't implementing "SetBrightness". And even then, the error only seems to occur when unity-settings-daemon changes to GSD_POWER_IDLE_MODE_BLANK. So I wouldn't expect that to be related to logging in, probably.

Do you have a keyboard backlight at all? Or an external keyboard plugged in?

Actually, no it's not related. You say your problem is with gnome-shell logins and the above is about Unity7 only...

Please try:
 1. sudo apt install openssh-server
 2. Log in from a second machine via ssh, and run: journalctl -f
 3. On the original machine log in locally and reproduce the freeze.
 4. What does your journalctl output say after that? Can you paste it here?

> Do you have a keyboard backlight at all? Or an external keyboard plugged in?

Yes my keyboard has some automatic backlight

> What does your journalctl output say after that? Can you paste it here?

Will attach the full output, I think the culprit is:

janv. 10 07:54:48 hephaistos gnome-session[2639]: gnome-session-binary[2639]: CRITICAL: Unable to create a DBus proxy for GnomeScreensaver: Erreur lors de l’appel de StartServiceByName pour org.gnome.ScreenSaver : Le délai d’attente est dépassé
janv. 10 07:54:48 hephaistos gnome-session-binary[2639]: CRITICAL: Unable to create a DBus proxy for GnomeScreensaver: Erreur lors de l’appel de StartServiceByName pour org.gnome.ScreenSaver : Le délai d’attente est dépassé
janv. 10 07:54:48 hephaistos gnome-screensav[2776]: Couldn't get presence status: The name org.gnome.SessionManager was not provided by any .service files
janv. 10 07:54:48 hephaistos dbus-daemon[2632]: Successfully activated service 'org.gnome.ScreenSaver'

Thanks for your help :)

Full output of journactl, the freeze is between janv. 10 07:54:23 and janv. 10 07:54:48

OK, thanks. This looks like it:

janv. 10 07:54:48 hephaistos gnome-session[2639]: gnome-session-binary[2639]: CRITICAL: Unable to create a DBus proxy for GnomeScreensaver: Erreur lors de l’appel de StartServiceByName pour org.gnome.ScreenSaver : Le délai d’attente est dépassé
janv. 10 07:54:48 hephaistos gnome-session-binary[2639]: CRITICAL: Unable to create a DBus proxy for GnomeScreensaver: Erreur lors de l’appel de StartServiceByName pour org.gnome.ScreenSaver : Le délai d’attente est dépassé
janv. 10 07:54:48 hephaistos gnome-screensav[2776]: Couldn't get presence status: The name org.gnome.SessionManager was not provided by any .service files
janv. 10 07:54:48 hephaistos dbus-daemon[2632]: Successfully activated service 'org.gnome.ScreenSaver'

We can probably merge this with bug 1736011. Just wait and see what the reporter of that one says.

Alternatively, such freezes are often due to something crashing and the delay is your system writing a dump/crash file. Do you see any files in /var/crash ?

No, there's nothing in /var/crash

I also found the bug you are talking about when searching for the error message. I added myself to the bug mail for 1736011. Thanks for your help Daniel :)

What are the other errors from #4 about if I may ask? I experience the exact same errors. Fortunately, I don't suffer from delays in login. FWIW, I also use unity7, on bionic.

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