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Mate desktop pointer flickers at startup - general protection fault

Recently at startup the desktop pointer alternates between a spinning wheel and the pointer rapidly and the desktop icons are slower than usual to appear. Looking in the log found several errors e.g.

Code: [Select]
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz dbus-daemon[1597]: [system] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.ColorManager' failed: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz dbus-daemon[1597]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.ColorManager' requested by ':1.2' (uid=0 pid=2125 comm="/usr/bin/cupsd -f -c /etc/cups/cupsd.conf -s /etc/") (using servicehelper)
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz dbus-daemon[1597]: [system] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.ColorManager' failed: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz dbus-daemon[1597]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.ColorManager' requested by ':1.2' (uid=0 pid=2125 comm="/usr/bin/cupsd -f -c /etc/cups/cupsd.conf -s /etc/") (using servicehelper)
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz dbus-daemon[1597]: [system] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.ColorManager' failed: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz dbus-daemon[1597]: [system] Activating service name='org.freedesktop.ColorManager' requested by ':1.2' (uid=0 pid=2125 comm="/usr/bin/cupsd -f -c /etc/cups/cupsd.conf -s /etc/") (using servicehelper)
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz dbus-daemon[1597]: [system] Activated service 'org.freedesktop.ColorManager' failed: Launch helper exited with unknown return code 1

ar 24 01:14:33 xyz supervise-daemon[2068]: /usr/bin/saned, pid 2135, exited with return code 0
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz supervise-daemon[2136]: Child command line: /usr/bin/saned root 
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2136]: saned (AF-indep+IPv6) from sane-backends 1.2.1 starting up
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2136]: check_host: getpeername failed: Socket operation on non-socket
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2136]: init: access by host [error] denied
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2136]: saned exiting
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz supervise-daemon[2068]: /usr/bin/saned, pid 2136, exited with return code 0
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz supervise-daemon[2138]: Child command line: /usr/bin/saned root 
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz supervise-daemon[2139]: Supervisor command line: supervise-daemon sshd --start /usr/bin/sshd -- -f /etc/ssh/sshd_config -D 
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz supervise-daemon[2145]: Child command line: /usr/bin/sshd -f /etc/ssh/sshd_config -D 
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2138]: saned (AF-indep+IPv6) from sane-backends 1.2.1 starting up
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2138]: check_host: getpeername failed: Socket operation on non-socket
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2138]: init: access by host [error] denied
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2138]: saned exiting
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz supervise-daemon[2068]: /usr/bin/saned, pid 2138, exited with return code 0
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz supervise-daemon[2150]: Child command line: /usr/bin/saned root 
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2150]: saned (AF-indep+IPv6) from sane-backends 1.2.1 starting up
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2150]: check_host: getpeername failed: Socket operation on non-socket
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2150]: init: access by host [error] denied
Mar 24 01:14:33 xyz saned[2150]: saned exiting

Mar 24 01:14:41 xyz kernel: [   14.429911] traps: caja[2778] general protection fault ip:7f873248c3f1 sp:7ffd53d8d380 error:0 in libmate-desktop-2.so.17.1.4[7f8732487000+28000]
Mar 24 01:14:41 xyz kernel: [   14.845787] traps: caja[2790] general protection fault ip:7f4765a0e3f1 sp:7fffc0da42c0 error:0 in libmate-desktop-2.so.17.1.4[7f4765a09000+28000]
Mar 24 01:14:42 xyz kernel: [   15.333916] traps: caja[2802] general protection fault ip:7f407aba23f1 sp:7ffc74d693c0 error:0 in libmate-desktop-2.so.17.1.4[7f407ab9d000+28000]
Mar 24 01:14:42 xyz kernel: [   15.825473] traps: caja[2815] general protection fault ip:7fa667f773f1 sp:7fff6c903930 error:0 in libmate-desktop-2.so.17.1.4[7fa667f72000+28000]

I'm not using cups or saned at present so I could just remove those packages, but this wasn't happening until fairly recently and I don't think I have changed anything related to them (actually I had all but forgotten they were still installed) or changed any other config before this problem appeared, it seems to have got upgraded in most likely. There are quite a few more of those errors repeated too. Everything I am using in the desktop seems to work normally once that first flickering crashing bit has passed though.

Re: Mate desktop pointer flickers at startup - general protection fault

Reply #1 –
I’m having a similar problem on sway. After a month of not upgrading, I upgraded my system today and rebooted. When I open Firefox or Chromium and hover over the URL bar, the mouse cursor blinks (switches for a really short amount of time from the text cursor (that looks like an I) to the normal (triangle) cursor and then back). And sometimes when I click on a link, it isn’t registered. Or when I slowly select some text by dragging, it stops somewhere in the middle.

I already tried to use another mouse, but same problem. When I replug the mouse into the computer, dmesg doesn’t show any errors, just the usual stuff.

sway, libinput, elogind, wayland, wayland-protocols, libxcb and wlroots didn’t get updated. linux and udev did.

Edit: And I also unplugged the mouse, but the blinking still appeared.
Edit 2: Another thing I noticed is that when I switch the workspaces in sway with either keyboard or mouse, somtimes it quickly goes to the old workspace again. But typing text works fine. (So perhaps some weird behaviour in sway that is caused from the mouse inconstistencies?)
Edit 3: No mouse events come up with `sudo libinput debug-events` and hovering over the URL bar.
Edit 4: Using a program called wev, I found out that these events are getting sent:

Code: [Select]
[13:      wl_pointer] enter: serial: 23325; surface: 3, x, y: 206.371094, 291.015625
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] leave: surface: 3
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] enter: serial: 23327; surface: 3, x, y: 206.371094, 291.015625
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] leave: surface: 3
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] enter: serial: 23329; surface: 3, x, y: 206.371094, 291.015625
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] leave: surface: 3
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] enter: serial: 23331; surface: 3, x, y: 206.371094, 291.015625
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] leave: surface: 3
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] enter: serial: 23333; surface: 3, x, y: 206.371094, 291.015625
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] leave: surface: 3
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] enter: serial: 23335; surface: 3, x, y: 206.371094, 291.015625
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] leave: surface: 3
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] enter: serial: 23337; surface: 3, x, y: 206.371094, 291.015625
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] leave: surface: 3
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] enter: serial: 23339; surface: 3, x, y: 206.371094, 291.015625
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] leave: surface: 3
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] enter: serial: 23341; surface: 3, x, y: 206.371094, 291.015625
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] leave: surface: 3
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
[13:      wl_pointer] enter: serial: 23343; surface: 3, x, y: 206.371094, 291.015625
[13:      wl_pointer] frame
Edit 5: Downgrading linux did not fix the problem.
Edit 6: I haven’t been able to reproduce this issue on sway with a fresh artix-plasma-s6-20230320-x86_64.iso.
Edit 7: Unplugging the keyboard doesn’t help either.
Edit 8: `udevadm monitor --kernel --property --subsystem-match=usb` doesn’t show the mouse or keyboard getting removed and readded or sth like that
Edit 9: i3 works fine. so it seems like it is wayland, wlroots or sway specific, I guess
Edit 10: hyprland seems to work as well, so I guess it’s down to wlroots or sway

Re: Mate desktop pointer flickers at startup - general protection fault

Reply #2 –
Here I found linux-lts does this less than linux-zen, although the same errors are present in the log there are less of them, especially the caja general protection fault - something to do with accessing wrong memory addresses, and the delay is not so noticeable at desktop startup.

Re: Mate desktop pointer flickers at startup - general protection fault

Reply #3 –
I don’t have any caja messages in `sudo dmesg` and I’m using the normal linux package.

Re: Mate desktop pointer flickers at startup - general protection fault

Reply #4 –
@####### Did that problem only appear for you after you upgraded your system? Or randomly from one day to the other?

Re: Mate desktop pointer flickers at startup - general protection fault

Reply #5 –
I noticed recently there was this slower desktop startup, can't remember exactly when it started, then I finally got round to checking if anything was in the logs yesterday. It does it consistently on every boot.
caja is the mate desktop file manager, it seems to be crashing and getting restarted repeatedly (from the PID nos in the []) until it finally works:
traps: caja[2739] general protection fault ip:7f92b7ef83f1 sp:7ffcb1082a50 error:0 in libmate-desktop-2.so.17.1.4[7f92b7ef3000+28000]
/usr/lib/libmate-desktop-2.so.17.1.4 is owned by mate-desktop 1.26.0-1
But the fault is less obvious in older kernel versions, so it could have been around for longer than I noticed. On a much older (say 2+ years old) linux-git self compiled kernel I happened to have about still, the general protection fault wasn't logged at all but the other 2 errors still occurred, that may only have been due to it not being caught by the kernel though, who knows. This is on a Dell M4500 , if hw was relevant, and using OpenRC.

Re: Mate desktop pointer flickers at startup - general protection fault

Reply #6 –
I didn't have this problem on another PC that was last updated a few days ago, or on another laptop (M4400) that was updated a week ago. This other laptop also had Gremlins enabled, and I saw there was a newer version of Mate desktop things in Gremlins, 1.27 instead of 1.26. So I thought well lets upgrade to that and see if it's OK - no it isn't.  On this laptop after upgrading to 1.27 I now get a 30 second long pause with a black blank screen and a mouse pointer which can be moved around on it before the desktop eventually appears.

So the only advice I can suggest for now is if you are using Mate, don't update for a bit! This new version is definitely best left to the Gremlins for a while until it gets sorted out, and some of those gremlins have even crept into the stable repos!

Re: Mate desktop pointer flickers at startup - general protection fault

Reply #7 –
Okay, I managed to fix my problem. It was a really dumb mistake: after I made my system upgrade, I forgot to upgrade wayvnc-git. So if you tried to start wayvnc, it said that it couldn’t find a shared library. And I had an s6 service which constantly tried to restart wayvnc because of that. This service also included a command to configure an output, which seems to make sway reload the mouse/keyboards. The sway debug logs (`sway -d`) helped me to track down the problem. Well, I upgraded wayvnc and now everything works again. I hope everything will work for you out, too @#######.

Re: Mate desktop pointer flickers at startup - general protection fault

Reply #8 –
That's great news, glad you resolved that issue. As for Mate, it seems the 1.27 version hasn't even been released by Mate themselves yet:
https://mate-desktop.org/
although it is available to download here, the date by the link is currently older (January vs March) than 1.26 which indicates 1.26 is still the current version receiving updates:
https://pub.mate-desktop.org/releases/
So I guess this new 1.27 version is a pre-release preview so they can get some feedback from users, unless it just got picked up by Arch package update scripts by mistake or something.
I can always switch to using another desktop if needed, they are quite unwieldy things to selectively not upgrade for any extended time spell, with their myriad of packages and dependencies that may be shared by other apps.

Re: Mate desktop pointer flickers at startup - general protection fault

Reply #9 –
The flickering at startup doesn't happen in Arch linux although that's a basic install for testing purposes so not identical to my usual config. The 1.27 version doesn't appear in the Arch repos (community, community-testing, community-staging) currently - only 1.26 there. Sometimes they put things in then take them out later though.

Re: Mate desktop pointer flickers at startup - general protection fault

Reply #10 –
FWIW the 1.26 flickering pointer problem seems to be fixed by installing the Arch package "community/mate-desktop" because that is a newer version than what was in Artix:  1.26.0-1  vs  1.26.1-1 (Arch is still on 1.26 in stable and testing.)