Slack refusing to start

Question

from 30 minutes ago on slack refuses to start on my 20.04 box. Last thing i did before it stopped working was updating firefox to 102.0 but i'm not confident if this is related to it.

I downloaded the recent slack 4.27.154 deb package from their website and installed it through through apt install, however it still refuses to start.

Here's the console output:

> slack 
Initializing local storage instance
[winston] Attempt to write logs with no transports {"error":{},"level":"error","message":"Unable to create logs directory"}
[winston] Attempt to write logs with no transports {"level":"info","message":"\n╔════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╗\n║      Slack 4.27.154, linux 5.15.0-10033-tuxedo on x64      ║\n╚════════════════════════════════════════════════════════════╝"}
[winston] Attempt to write logs with no transports {"meta":{"shouldUseNewBackend":false,"loggerInstanceCount":1},"level":"info","message":"Configured logger via"}
[winston] Attempt to write logs with no transports {"meta":{"NODE_ENV":"production","platform":"linux","type":"browser","timeZone":"Europe/Berlin","PACKAGE_MANIFEST.productName":"Slack","PACKAGE_MANIFEST.version":"4.27.154","PACKAGE_MANIFEST.commit":"8956995","PACKAGE_MANIFEST.branch":"HEAD"},"level":"info","message":"Predefined values for process"}
[winston] Attempt to write logs with no transports {"level":"debug","message":"getLogger: Winston backend does not support child logger"}

I also noticed a strange error when trying to get the help information:

❯ slack --help
A JavaScript error occurred in the main process
Uncaught Exception:
TypeError: b is not a function
    at y (/usr/lib/slack/resources/app.asar/dist/boot.bundle.js:1:32588)
    at Pt (/usr/lib/slack/resources/app.asar/dist/boot.bundle.js:1:7238)
    at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/lib/slack/resources/app.asar/dist/boot.bundle.js:1:5038)
    at Object.D (/usr/lib/slack/resources/app.asar/dist/boot.bundle.js:1:4765)
    at /usr/lib/slack/resources/app.asar/dist/boot.bundle.js:32:16305
    at /usr/lib/slack/resources/app.asar/dist/boot.bundle.js:32:16414
    at /usr/lib/slack/resources/app.asar/dist/boot.bundle.js:32:16418
    at Object.<anonymous> (/usr/lib/slack/resources/app.asar/dist/boot.bundle.js:32:16440)
    at Module._compile (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1118:14)
    at Module._extensions..js (node:internal/modules/cjs/loader:1173:10)

Anyone has any idea what the problem is? I'm not finding anything on this stuff in the web.

Answer 1

**UPDATE : July, 8th **

Available working version now from slack is : 4.27.156

https://downloads.slack-edge.com/releases/linux/4.27.156/prod/x64/slack-desktop-4.27.156-amd64.deb

---

OUTDATED proposal : I confirm also that this version of Slack seems to have problems.

as explained by @Iam Strad you can install Slack from snapcraft, unfortunately, it will probably not be enough as it brings you the same version 4.27.154 2022-06-27.

But with snap you can find an older version of slack that is still functional until a better version is published.

sudo apt update
sudo apt install snapd
sudo snap install slack --channel=insider/edge

or

sudo snap refresh slack --channel=insider/edge

it should bring you version 4.25.1 that could be a temporary workaround .

> snap info slack

name:      slack
summary:   Team communication for the 21st century.
publisher: Slack✓
store-url: https://snapcraft.io/slack
(...)
channels:
  latest/stable:     4.27.154 2022-06-27 (63) 110MB -
  latest/candidate:  ↑                              
  latest/beta:       ↑                              
  latest/edge:       ↑                              
  insider/stable:    –                              
  insider/candidate: –                              
  insider/beta:      –                              
  insider/edge:      4.25.1   2022-04-01 (61) 108MB -
installed:           4.25.1              (61) 108MB -

Answer 2

Downgrading seems to work, as a workaround for now;

sudo apt install slack-desktop=4.26.1

Answer 3

As a workaround you could use slack with chromium. In a terminal you could execute: chromium --app=https://yourslackworkspace.slack.com

If that works, create your own desktop file in /home/user/.local/shares/applications for easy access:

[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=Chromium Slack chat
Comment= Slack chat app
Exec=chromium --app=https://yourslackworkspace.slack.com
Icon=/home/user/.local/share/applications/slack.png
Path=
Terminal=false
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=yourslackworkspace.slack.com

I'm running slack with this config, calls, huddle etc works out of the box

Answer 4

For those who have the it installed on apt-get:

In my search for an older version to roll back to, I ended up scouring the flathub code for a url for downloading an older .deb and came across:

https://downloads.slack-edge.com/releases/linux/$version/prod/x64/slack-desktop-$version-amd64.deb

Replacing the $version with a version number found on the slack release notes page did the trick.

Example:

wget https://downloads.slack-edge.com/releases/linux/4.26.1/prod/x64/slack-desktop-4.26.1-amd64.deb

and then

sudo dpkg -i slack-desktop-4.26.1-amd64.deb

UPDATE: I could have probably saved a lot of trouble by following the dowgrade path for flatpak apps.

Answer 5

I found these problems, my slack was installed by *.deb and yesterday I updated to version 4.27. I solved it by updating the nvidia video card drivers, using the drivers from the nvidia-driver package.