Gnome-shell freeze

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Hello,

Seeing the number of subscription to this bug, I believe it also affect a huge number of users. In fact, I usually use Unity. I had no problem. Then I installed gnome shell and started using it. It usually freezes out of the blue after 1 hour usage. As mentioned by the OP the mouse moves but you can click wherever you want, you won't get any result.

In the end, I stopped using gnome-shell, even if I must admit that, to my taste, the Shell beats Unity.

I have the same problem, so I just Ctrl+F1 and run "killall -9 gnome-shell", then everything go backs to normal. Where should I find log for such things.

This has been a problem for me for probably about a year. It often happens with vmware player open in my gnome-shell. I've become so used to it that I was actually looking for a keyboard shortcut to launch the killall gnome-shell! It happens to me two or three times a week so if someone tells me how, I can easily give you a dump of gnome-shell/X/etc when it happens. I've colleagues with the same problem.

For the record I'm using 12.04 and gnome-shell 3.4.1.

Same here for almost a year. It happens approximately five times a week. Very annoying!

(13.10 and GNOME Shell 3.8.4 right now)

I can reproduce the freeze on Ubuntu 14.04 with gnome-shell 3.12 from the gnome3-team ppa.

You can freeze gnome shell this way:

1) Start nautilus
2) Press ctrl+l to navigate to a directory using the keyboard.

Some ppl suggests this is a driver issue. I don't think so. I'm running this on an optimus laptop. The freeze is reproducible using both i915 and nouveau.

This is the stack trace:

(gdb) #0 0x00007f39d0469fbd in poll () at ../sysdeps/unix/syscall-template.S:81
#1 0x00007f39c7c0fb72 in ?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1
#2 0x00007f39c7c113ff in ?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1
#3 0x00007f39c7c11512 in xcb_wait_for_reply () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libxcb.so.1
#4 0x00007f39cd73948f in _XReply () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6
#5 0x00007f39cd720c74 in _XGetWindowAttributes () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6
#6 0x00007f39cd720de1 in XGetWindowAttributes () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libX11.so.6
#7 0x00007f39d213241c in meta_window_new (display=display@entry=0x3061fd0, xwindow=23069590, must_be_viewable=must_be_viewable@entry=0, effect=effect@entry=META_COMP_EFFECT_CREATE)
    at core/window.c:877
#8 0x00007f39d20ff8fe in event_callback (event=0x7fff992b47b0, data=0x3061fd0) at core/display.c:2790
#9 0x00007f39d214e933 in filter_func (xevent=0x7fff992b47b0, event=<optimized out>, data=<optimized out>) at ui/ui.c:261
#10 0x00007f39cd497411 in ?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgdk-3.so.0
#11 0x00007f39cd4976de in ?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgdk-3.so.0
#12 0x00007f39cd46edd9 in gdk_display_get_event () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgdk-3.so.0
#13 0x00007f39cd497492 in ?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgdk-3.so.0
#14 0x00007f39d09a8e04 in g_main_context_dispatch () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
#15 0x00007f39d09a9048 in ?? () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
#16 0x00007f39d09a930a in g_main_loop_run () from /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libglib-2.0.so.0
#17 0x00007f39d210c2a1 in meta_run () at core/main.c:566
#18 0x0000000000401d01 in main (argc=1, argv=0x7fff992b4ba8) at main.c:437

Any news on this ? It still happens in ubuntu 14.10 with gnome-shell 3.12.2. I have this issues almost everytime I use my computer sometimes it freeze for a few second and comes back, sometimes I have to kill gnome-shell.

This bug is affecting me too.
It's no big deal, but really annoying cause I need to kill the process when it freezes.
Sometimes it will come back itself, sometime it doesnt.

Same here, Gnome Shell 3.12.2 on Ubuntu 12.04. Gnome Shell freezes randomly, for few seconds and comes back after few seconds. During freeze I can move mouse.

I guess this is caused by some of extensions, because Gnome Shell runs on single thread using async JavaScript. So if an extension does a blocking non-io bound operation, whole Gnome Shell freezes, while this operation is finished.

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu. I apologize that we are not always to respond to bug reports promptly. Ubuntu 13.10 reached End of Life in 2014. See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

Please upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and re-test. If the bug is still reproducible, increase the verbosity of the steps to recreate it so we can try again.

Do feel free to report any other bugs you may find.