16.04: programs like Nautilus or gnome-screenshot hang for 20 seconds before opening

Question

Summary: sometimes launching Nautilus or taking a screenshot takes 20 seconds or more. The only solution seems to be rebooting. At every reboot I have 50% chance of this occurring again.

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See updates at the bottom!

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I have a Dell laptop with Ubuntu 16.04 (pre)installed. Some times (I'd say, every 2 sessions) I have my entire session affected by a problem with some applications hanging or not starting at all. This is usually solved by rebooting (which isn't ideal).

The most common way I realise that the current session is affected, is by trying to open a nautilus window (by clicking on the "Files" dock icon). The window will open, but only after ~20 seconds.

Also if I try to launch a File dialog from within other programs (e.g. when doing File > Open or Mail > Attach), the file picker will appear after 20 seconds, freezing the parent program in the meantime.

Another thing that happens is that if I launch gnome-screenshot from the dock (equivalent to gnome-screenshot -i), it doesn't hang but after I click Take Screenshot it takes ~20 seconds before actually taking the screenshot. In the meantime, I can't seem to launch other instances of gnome-screenshot.

The majority of other programs I use are unaffected by this.

Additional info:

• I have a NVIDIA gpu, but this happens regardless of it being active or disabled through nvidia-prime
• The problem doesn't happen at every boot, but once I notice it, it is reproduced 100% of the time within that session
• The laptop hasn't been suspended when this problem appears. The problem, when it appears, seems to appear since booting.
• I always make all the updates. This has always happened since I started using this laptop (8 months)

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Updates 19 Aug (thanks Robert Riedl for making me look at peripherals and syslogs):

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Looking at the /var/log/syslogs, I can notice these different behaviors:

• gnome-screenshot: good session:

    Aug 19 08:13:01 quokka dbus[964]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.hostname1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.hostname1.service'
    Aug 19 08:13:01 quokka systemd[1]: Starting Hostname Service...
    Aug 19 08:13:01 quokka kernel: [  162.129006] talpa-vfshook: devpts is on the skip list, not patching
    Aug 19 08:13:01 quokka kernel: [  162.129031] talpa-vfshook: mqueue is on the skip list, not patching
    Aug 19 08:13:01 quokka kernel: [  162.129037] talpa-vfshook: Patching hugetlbfs
    Aug 19 08:13:01 quokka dbus[964]: [system] Successfully activated service 'org.freedesktop.hostname1'
    Aug 19 08:13:01 quokka systemd[1]: Started Hostname Service.

• gnome-screenshot: bad session:

  Nothing on fire; then when eventually the screenshot is taken, only this line

      Aug 19 07:57:51 quokka dbus[1029]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.hostname1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.hostname1.service'

• nautilus: good session:

  No relevant syslogs

• nautilus: bad session:

  Nothing on fire; then when eventually the window is open, only this line

      Aug 19 08:01:31 quokka dbus[1029]: [system] Activating via systemd: service name='org.freedesktop.hostname1' unit='dbus-org.freedesktop.hostname1.service'

Answer 1

Update August 19, 2019

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Sounds like this 2 year old bug:

the solution seems to be adding

dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DISPLAY XAUTHORITY

to .xinitrc or .xsession.

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Original Answer

This thread has techniques you can use to narrow down the problem:

• Nautilus 3.30 starts very slowly, and I see error messages running Nautilus from the terminal

The next time it happens, rather than starting Nautilus from the GUI desktop or menu open a terminal and type nautilus. Then you will hopefully see some error messages that tell you the exact problem.

In the link above the solution hinted at was to use:

cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc

Then edit the file ~/.xinitrc and add the dbus command. On my system the end result would look like this:

$ cat ~/.xinitrc

#!/bin/sh

# /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
#
# global xinitrc file, used by all X sessions started by xinit (startx)

# invoke global X session script
. /etc/X11/Xsession
dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS DISPLAY XAUTHORITY

Answer 2

Nicola,

In addition to looking at the logs recommend I highly recommend opening a terminal and watching a running "top" session before duplicating the problem.

Also you can run it from the F1 or other txt login sessions, or even remotely through ssh if the session hangs.

I have had various issues with nautilus and apps (mostly via vnc but sometimes at host), and this has sometimes lead to a resolution.

For instance you might be able to tell which process is taking up all the time, the app, nautilus or other.

Curt