GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 708607
gnome-session "Oh no, something has gone wrong" is uninformative
Last modified: 2021-06-14 18:20:48 UTC
When starting gnome-session (either from GDM, LightDM or manually), it locks the whole screen with a grey background and complains "Oh no, something has gone wrong". While this might have a reasonable reason, the bug is, that it holds out the details from the user, making it absolutely impossible to debug and repair the problem. Do you really want to be like Wind*ws?
You are withholding details from the developer. Like what OS, what version of gnome-session, gnome-settings-daemon, etc.
Yes, sure, the debug information is held out only in a very specific version and only in extremely rare combinations with other Gnome components... My OS is Debian (sid) Linux, using Gnome Session 3.8.2.1-1 and Gnome Settings Daemon 3.8.5-1.
(In reply to Matthias Clasen from comment #1) > You are withholding details from the developer. > > Like what OS, what version of gnome-session, gnome-settings-daemon, etc. I don't think any of this information is relevant. I've seen this screen several times and I'm in a situation where one of my computers is rendered useless because this screen keeps returning. (It's gnome 3.14 on Debian jessie 8.1, in case someone cares.) For me, this message is almost an insult: "Something" has gone wrong. A little detail might help me to diagnose the problem and fix it. Like a trace of whatever the heck it was trying to do when "Something went wrong". It's absolutely useless: If it just crashed, it would be no worse.
I have the same problem. Do you have mesa drivers?
(In reply to Matthias Clasen from comment #1) > You are withholding details from the developer. > > Like what OS, what version of gnome-session, gnome-settings-daemon, etc. The bug report here does not appear to be "GNOME sometimes crashes" (which would indeed require that information to address), but rather "when it does, the 'something has gone wrong' splash doesn't offer any debug information". Related bug report <https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=831890> has some suggestions of things that could constructively go there: > * fallback where possible to a simple trouble-shooting screen > * helpful messages telling the user how to reboot or otherwise get > to a terminal, with suggestions on where to look for errors > * real error messages that the user can google for, or pass on to > somebody else sensibly - maybe hidden under a "details" button or > drop-down? (In reply to Giorgio from comment #4) > I have the same problem. > > Do you have mesa drivers? You have the same superficial symptom, but most likely for different reasons. For specific instances of a crash that results in this symptom, please open a separate bug report with the information that Matthias requested, and look in whichever log your OS uses for this sort of thing - perhaps the systemd Journal, ~/.cache/gdm or ~/.xsession-errors - for any relevant log messages, particularly from gnome-session or from crashing processes.
Hi Matthias, I guess, one problem of the fail whale itself is, that it doesn't provide any useful details about the system itself. We should provide more detailed information, what went wrong (something users can paste into google^your favourite search engine) and details about the system. I think it would also be helpful if the fail whale provided an "ignore" option. For example, I've uses ALT-F2+r a couple of times in past to test stuff. gnome-session as a result unhelpfully disabled all my plugins without prior asking.
> I think it would also be helpful if the fail whale provided an "ignore" option. The fail whale is not supposed to come up for anything that you can reasonably ignore.
(In reply to Matthias Clasen from comment #7) > > I think it would also be helpful if the fail whale provided an "ignore" option. > > The fail whale is not supposed to come up for anything that you can > reasonably ignore. you mean like manually restarting the shell, as I posted earlier
(In reply to Michael Biebl from comment #6) > I think it would also be helpful if the fail whale provided an "ignore" option. This "ignore option" is meandering into the wrong direction. The report explains that the current design makes "it absolutely impossible to debug and repair the problem". I've seen cases where "something has gone wrong" popped up reproducibly. What can a user do in such a situation? Google for an error message in search for help in some forum? Impossible. Report a bug? Not sensible. Against what? (One can't even search the bug database.)
I hope someone can suggest how this issue can be fixed. Just a little more hint instead of "oh no something has gone wrong" can provide user a way to troubleshoot the issue.
GNOME is going to shut down bugzilla.gnome.org in favor of gitlab.gnome.org. As part of that, we are mass-closing older open tickets in bugzilla.gnome.org which have not seen updates for a longer time (resources are unfortunately quite limited so not every ticket can get handled). If you can still reproduce the situation described in this ticket in a recent and supported software version of gnome-session, then please follow https://wiki.gnome.org/GettingInTouch/BugReportingGuidelines and create a new ticket at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-session/-/issues/ Thank you for your understanding and your help.