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File browser designed for elementary OS
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SAVE Operations Result in Immediate Application Crashes Hera 5.1.7 (March 2021) #1636

Open ganakee opened 3 years ago

ganakee commented 3 years ago

Summary Intermittently but frequently, attempts to SAVE (e.g., Writer documents or PDFs) results in an immediate crash of the running application--the application just disappears. Relaunching the application may result in a recovery attempt (e.g., LibreOffice), but this then also fails as another SAVE apparently takes place. The applications are installed via apt/AppCenter (not flatpaks).

This has been occurring for approximately one month (late February 2021 or early March 2021).

I initially reported this bug to the Mozilla Team (see https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1694677). (They were diligent but suggested the bug may be in the elementary OS file dialogue component.) However, later testing by me suggests that the bug occurs with other applications (e.g., LibreOffice) during SAVE actions. The bug results in an immediate termination/crash of the running program when attempting to SAVE from the file dialogue.

When running (for example) Firefox from the terminal (to see error messages) errors include:

IPDL protocol error: Handler returned error code!

###!!! [Parent][DispatchAsyncMessage] Error: PLayerTransaction::Msg_ReleaseLayer Processing error: message was deserialized, but the handler returned false (indicating failure)

IPDL protocol error: Handler returned error code!

###!!! [Parent][DispatchAsyncMessage] Error: PLayerTransaction::Msg_ReleaseLayer Processing error: message was deserialized, but the handler returned false (indicating failure)

IPDL protocol error: Handler returned error code!

###!!! [Parent][DispatchAsyncMessage] Error: PLayerTransaction::Msg_ReleaseLayer Processing error: message was deserialized, but the handler returned false (indicating failure)

IPDL protocol error: Handler returned error code!

###!!! [Parent][DispatchAsyncMessage] Error: PLayerTransaction::Msg_ReleaseLayer Processing error: message was deserialized, but the handler returned false (indicating failure)

Also helpful may be several examples of crash reports from Mozilla: https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/56dc5836-dd9c-42e9-8ef2-5d8a70210316

https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/fb55f820-97bb-449c-8761-56d6b0210316

https://crash-stats.mozilla.org/report/index/c8b76c02-f95c-4597-9f85-874440210317

The crashing appears intermittently but frequently.

Earlier Report I amend the original report below to indicate that the issue applies to more than just web-based PDFs. for example, the crashes occur when saving a document created in LibreOffice Writer.

Summary Attempt to save a web-based PDF results in an immediate crash of the web browser/PDf viewer. Cannot SAVE web PDFs. Occurring for at least a month.

System Info elementary OS 5.1.7 Hera (updated to 2021-03-16) any web browser (Firefox 86.0 x64 or Chromium Version 89.0.4389.82) System Memory 32GB

Description Open a website using any web browser. Identify a PDF. Select the PDF. The browser (example Firefox) opens a dialogue window: What should Firefox do with this file?. Any attempt to SAVE or SAVE AS the file results in an abrupt and immediate crash of the web browser. (This occurs regardless of the method--viewing in Firefox or viewing via Document Viewer)

Similar situation in Chromium. PDF opens in Chromium but any attempt to SAVE results in a sudden and immediate crash.

Effect Cannot use elementary OS to save web-sourced PDFs.

Note I thought that this might be a flatpak issue. I did flatpak list and NONE OF THE BROWSERS are installed via flatpak (they do not appear in the list). The browsers are default apt package manager/appcenter installations.

jeremypw commented 3 years ago

Please say what version of Files you are using - there have not been any new releases of Files since last year. The current master version of Files is not compatible with Hera.

ganakee commented 3 years ago

Thank you. Sorry for the delay. (Did not get my following-notice and had the wrong link in my browser. Sorry.) In AppCenter, Files = 4.5.0 In All Settings...About elementary OS Hera 5.1.7 (GTK 3.22.30) This is a fairly plain-vanilla install--not many/any customizations this is a daily use system.. The crashes are still happening. I see this most when, e.g., downloading a paper copy of a bill or statement from a web source.

jeremypw commented 3 years ago

OK, thanks. A lot of changes have been made to the filechooser in elementary 6 - we are now implementing a portal so as to be compatible with flatpaks. Unfortunately this means we will not be issuing any more releases for Hera. Not sure what is causing your problem - I did not experience anything similar when I was using Hera. You could try uninstalling Files and installing e.g. Nautilus (Gnome File Manager) instead.

ganakee commented 3 years ago

Thanks for your work on 6. (I just bought a new, small drive to prep for 6.0 and can't wait for release.) I will try Nautilus and see if that helps and will plan to report back here in case anyone else seems this.

davidmhewitt commented 3 years ago

Another thing to test to narrow this down would be to temporarily disable the elementary file chooser module, you can do this by moving pantheon-filechooser-module.sh out of /etc/profile.d and rebooting.

The filechooser should then just fallback to the standard GTK one without elementary modifications.

You can put the file back if it doesn't help or breaks things more.

ganakee commented 3 years ago

I tried @davidmhewitt 's suggestion and removed the pantheon-filechooser-module.sh and rebooted. I did NOT uninstall Files or install Nautilus. I just did the one thing for now to help narrow this down.

So far, about four days, no crashes working with online PDFs. (I am not certain this cured the issue, but I have seen more stability so far.)

davidmhewitt commented 3 years ago

This filechooser module will no longer exist in elementary OS 6.0, so if it has fixed your issue, then you can be assured that you won't have this issue in 6.0 either.

ganakee commented 3 years ago

Thanks @davidmhewitt . I check in again to verify that I have been running for about 10 days now on elementary OS Hera 5.1, and AFTER removing pantheon-filechooser-module.sh as noted above, and have had no crashes on SAVE operations. Good to know about the elementary 6.0! Can't wait. Thank you for looking into this.