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Too often, when I attempt to login on Gnome 3.28.2 (Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS Bionic Beaver (fresh install, but old home account recopied)), once the password is entered, the login window remains there, hanging. Nothing happens for minutes.

I then have to switch to a console and 'kill -9 '. This is not good publicity when this happens in front of my Windows and Mac friends.

In the best scenario, I get in after 5s. Why is it now instantly? I searched /var/log/syslog for clues, but I cannot find any. Sure there are plenty of gnome-shell errors, but none that seams related to my login problem.

Obviously, I want a solution to my problem. But I also want to learn how one can go to investigate the source of the problem. Which log file should I look into? How do I enable tracing in Gnome?

My hardware is a 'HP Elitebook Folio 9470m' equipped with an Intel GPU but I do not believe that this is relevant.

The gnome extensions I have installed are the following. One thing bizarre is that I disabled many of them, but the state does not seam to be saved. Next kill-9 gnome-shell I perform, the extensions return enabled. Seams like the only way to have the extensions state save is to logout?

drwxrwxr-x  3 hans hans 4096 May 20  2018 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  3 hans hans 4096 May 25  2018 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  7 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 Feb 12 02:59 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 Nov  6 07:56 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  6 hans hans 4096 Feb 21 18:17 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  2 hans hans 4096 May 21  2018 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 Nov 28 01:28 gTile@vibou
drwxrwxr-x  2 hans hans 4096 Nov  7 06:16 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 Jun 22  2018 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  3 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  2 hans hans 4096 Feb  4 06:11 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  2 hans hans 4096 May 25  2018 [email protected]@gmail.com
drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 Feb  4 06:11 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  5 hans hans 4096 Nov 14 07:57 [email protected]
drwxrwxr-x  3 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 [email protected]
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  • 1
    You may have a GNOME extension problem. 1) show me ls -al ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions. Edit all output into your question please. , 2) create a temporary "guest" account, log in there, and see if it works. Report back to @heynnema
    – heynnema
    Feb 23, 2019 at 1:16
  • @heynnema, I provide the extensions list as you requested. Thank you for your interest and your help.
    – Hans Deragon
    Feb 23, 2019 at 13:27
  • Extensions overload! And even some duplicates... topIcons and topicons-redux. Turn off ALL extensions at https://extensions.gnome.org/local/ and see if the problem goes away. If it does, go back and enable 1-2 extensions at a time and see if the problem returns. This may take some time, as more than one extension could be giving problems. The gnome-shell errors need to get fixed. Report back.
    – heynnema
    Feb 23, 2019 at 13:33
  • Did you try a "guest" account, as suggested?
    – heynnema
    Feb 23, 2019 at 13:38
  • @heynnema, it is definitively an extension problem. I have disabled them all and have enabled back hafl of them and it is login fast now. I have not nailed which one is the culprit though. Is there a bug report regarding this? Gnome should not be at the mercy of extensions; they should run in parallel, ideally in a separate process like Chrome does. This way it would easy to find a culprit and kill it without affecting Gnome. Please create an official answer to my question so I can reward you. Thank you.
    – Hans Deragon
    Mar 14, 2019 at 7:25

1 Answer 1

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2

From the comments...

The user has ~20 GNOME Shell extensions, and one or more of them are causing serious hangs at login time. In looking at the list of extensions, some extensions even appear to be duplicates.

Recommended to turn off ALL extensions at https://extensions.gnome.org/local/ and see if the problem goes away. If it does, go back and enable 1-2 extensions at a time and see if the problem returns. This may take some time, as more than one extension could be giving problems. Because the biggest impact is at login time, you'll have to logout, and login again, to actually see if the problem(s) are solved.

This method has already proven to help solve the problem. The user just needs to narrow down the specific culprit(s). Also needs to reduce the total number of extensions.

Also, you can grep search /var/log/syslog for gnome-shell errors, as it may call out specific suspect extensions, like so...

grep -i gnome-shell /var/log/syslog*

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  • In my case, grep -i gnome-shell /var/log/syslog* did not help, but maybe for others it or in the future it could be useful. Gnome should be able to run even though bad extensions are being used.
    – Hans Deragon
    Mar 14, 2019 at 14:34
  • @HansDeragon keep in mind that GNOME extensions are written by individuals, and they modify the behavior of the GNOME Shell. Even the best programmers can not anticipate how their software might interact with the various ways users configure their computers. As in your case, where you have way too many extensions, and any one or combination, could cause problems... as you've seen :-)
    – heynnema
    Mar 14, 2019 at 15:07

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