Issue with Nautilus (graphical corruption) after upgrading software

Support and Help
22

Oh, I have 6.8.0-85 locked so not going away.

Meanwhile, I was letting newer kernels get installed (I think the last one was close to this 6.8.0-135), then would ‘test’ them, only to eventually have things ‘go south’ (like locking up, hibernate logging me out, etc.), go back to 6.8.0-85, wait for the next kernel to come along which deletes the last one, then ‘test’ that one, and this went on and on until the last softwre updater trashed nautilus and having had enough,I ceased using software updater and would instead either open terminal and update a specific item like firefox (which it would do w/o corrupting nautilus) or use software & updates but only update a specific item like firefox…

Problem with nautilus corruption does not seem to be related to related to kernels… just that the updates would sometimes do small obsure things like hibernate button dissappearing, logging my out on hibernate, or big thngs like messing up nautilus. Recovery doesn’t fix it - only dump and reinstall image does.

yes, no corruption until right after software opdater - which may be corrupting file system?

I can use “LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 nautilus” in terminal and it comes up fine - just read only…. and I can use terminal (w/o sudo) to manage files - so doesn’t seem to be a drive/permission issue… and I can disable software updates and run nautilus for months w/o issues.

Grub Customizer is indeed installed and is essential in my triple boot system - Ubuntu/Windows/Fedora - it has been working fine since 20.04, 22.04, and now 24.04. It has nothing to do with nautilus corrption by software updater. It is a rabbit hole others on AskUbuntu took me down to no avail… it is merely a gui for editing the grub - works flawlessly.

…been on Wayland since 20.04 w/o issues (except xscreensaver doesn’t work)

nautilus currently is fine - not been corrupted since restoring image and stopping software updater. Back when it was corrupted, launching it had no popup messages - would just do the blinking, crashing, etc.

first time in Jan was using newest kernel - last time in May was 6.8.0-85… kernel is not the issue.

1 Like
23

What happened when you tried?

MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=kms_swrast
24

xscreensaver installs fine, go to run it and nothing happens - no error messages, etc. xscreensaver does not work in Wayland - requires xorg - did you not know this? Not sure what you mean by “MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=kms_swrast” - is this supposed to uncorrupt nautilus when software updater corrupts it?

not interested in any screensaver - only why/how software updater would/could be corruption my nautilus… just seems absurd that it happens, but when it does it is debilitating! I can still browse, play games, etc. - just nothing where a ‘files’ type window pops up (or run settings, etc.)

25

Yes, I did know this.
I understand that you honed in on this because it was in my quoted reply.
I should have removed the mention of xscreensaver, because it was not the principal reason for your issue.
Anyway, I suggest that we park xscreensaver issues for the time being and concentrate on your nautilus corruption.

No, this does not uncorrupt nautilus.
If you look at the link in post 18, you will see that it is intended to offer a method of forcing software rendering in a Wayland session

LIBGL_ALWAYS_SOFTWARE=1 is primarily for xorg
MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=kms_swrast is for Wayland

Now, back to your topic title, where Software Updater is responsible for nautilus corruption.
I would expect that an updated package installed by Software Updater may have corrupted nautilus, rather than Software Updater being responsible, in itself?

This looks like a graphical problem - do you have an Nvidia gpu?

Finally, download a pristine ISO of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS and run a “Try Ubuntu” live session.
Any corruption of nautilus?

26

Intel® 965GM

one of the many suggestions of AskUbuntu - nautilus worked flawlessly…

I agree, but how do I get rid of the offending updated package - how do I tell which one it is? My only recourse by not knowing, is to just stop software updater by unclicking all items… tried that but left just the conical repository checked and it still corrrupted nautilus.

27

Not yet mentioned but still under the “barking at the wrong tree” umbrella:

Apparently you’re dual-booting with Windows. What are the partitions that get corrupted? Are you aware that, in this scenario, disabling Windows’ Fast Startup “feature” is a must?

This being an alternative hypotheses that actually explains almost all the know facts. What can be happening is simply the result of rebooting to/from Windows with the semi-hibernation provided by the aforementioned “feature”. Depending on what (and how) additional partitions are mounted at boot weird things can happen. Typically it doesn’t affect file managers but it’s conceivable that some unusual setup leads to crashes/freeze due to certain partitions being “dirty”. What you then perceive or blame on the Software Updater - again, in ANY case, some updates it installs, NEVER the tool itself - is just a temporal coincidence, the old post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy.

28

This processor was released in 2007 and, possibly, may not be an ideal candidate for Ubuntu with Gnome.

How much RAM do you have?

Trial and error, I reckon.
This would be a painful process by installing one updated package and then testing.
Rinse and repeat with the next package - I wouldn’t do it.

However, as you are familiar with booting Windows, Fedora and Ubuntu, I would create a partition to install a lighter flavour of Ubuntu e.g. Lubuntu 26.04 or Xubuntu 26.04.

29

Start by posting the output of apt update here. I reckon, you have plenty of 3rd party sources and at least one of them is wreaking havoc on your system.
And please stop telling us stuff you’ve done without actually saying what (exactly) you have done. We aren’t mind readers, we operate on facts and data, provided by you; GIGO: Garbage In, Garbage Out — not to be confused with FIFO.

Please put all log and other console/terminal output in pre-formatted code blocks (open a new line and click the </> icon in the editor first, then paste into the new element), ideally wrapped in a “Hide Details” element, if it’s more than just a few lines. See items 4 and 5 in the Posting Guide.

Optional helper script

If you are so inclined, I took it upon myself to provide a little helper script for that. :sweat_droplets:

1 Like
30

Fast Startup was first introduced in Windows 8, so my Window 7 has no Fast Startup… and it’s a triple boot (Ubuntu-Fedora-Windoz) - and before we go any further my bios is too old to support Quick Boot :wink:

31

4Gb RAM - 8Gb swap

No need - Fedora 43 is ‘light’ enough…

32

So what is this discussion then about ?

1 Like
33

…about getting my Ubuntu back to normal, for it is my workhorse for my computer work (website publishing, qtel/echolink, video editing, photo editing, gaming, etc.).
Fedora 43 is there for browsing, email, etc. - the ‘light’ stuff…

34

~/Desktop$ apt update
Reading package lists… Done
E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/apt/lists/lock - open (13: Permission denied)
E: Unable to lock directory /var/lib/apt/lists/
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/pkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)
W: Problem unlinking the file /var/cache/apt/srcpkgcache.bin - RemoveCaches (13: Permission denied)

I adjusted my software updater settings. I have had everything unchecked to prevent any updates… but only re-check canonical (software updater if run, will want to do the ‘partial upgrade’ thing again that ran last time I tried to update after restoring image - but afterwards nautilus was of course messed up…)

SoftwareUpdatesDisabled
SoftwareUpdatesDisabled553×286 27.1 KB

35

Did G4L lzop image of sda5 (Ubuntu partition) so I can always wayback to before tampering with updater, then ran the update in terminal (see result above), and now with only canonical checked in the software updater settings, ran ‘upgrade’ but stopped upgrade:

~/Desktop$ sudo apt upgrade
[sudo] password for batgirl: 
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  libreoffice-style-breeze linux-headers-6.8.0-53
  linux-headers-6.8.0-53-generic linux-modules-6.8.0-53-generic
  linux-modules-extra-6.8.0-53-generic lp-solve
Use 'sudo apt autoremove' to remove them.
Get more security updates through Ubuntu Pro with 'esm-apps' enabled:
  openjdk-11-jre openjdk-11-jre-headless qt5-qmake-bin
  libmagickcore-6.q16-7t64 qtbase5-dev-tools ofono libqt5xml5t64
  qt5-gtk-platformtheme imagemagick libqt5sql5t64 libmagickcore-6.q16-7-extra
  libqt5qml5 libqt5test5t64 libwinpr2-2t64 libcjson1 libavdevice60 ffmpeg
  libqt5quick5 libopenexr-3-1-30 libpostproc57 python3-wheel libqt5gui5t64
  libmbedcrypto7t64 libavcodec60 libavcodec60 libqt5printsupport5t64
  qtbase5-dev libqt5concurrent5t64 libavutil58 libavutil58 libqt5widgets5t64
  imagemagick-6.q16 libswscale7 libfreerdp-server2-2t64 python3-pip
  libfreerdp-client2-2t64 libqt5dbus5t64 libqt5network5t64 libqt5opengl5-dev
  libqt5opengl5t64 libswresample4 libswresample4 imagemagick-6-common
  libqt5sql5-sqlite libqt5qmlmodels5 qt5-qmake libavformat60 libfreerdp2-2t64
  libqt5core5t64 libavfilter9 libmagickwand-6.q16-7t64
Learn more about Ubuntu Pro at https://ubuntu.com/pro
The following packages will be upgraded:
  firefox-esr
1 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 77.2 MB of archives.
After this operation, 393 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] n
Abort.
36

Should I run Software Updater with only the Canonical checked, and just let it do it’s ‘partial upgrade’? This will probably corrupt nautilus, but then we can launch nautilus in terminal and see any output due to its corruption :expressionless:

37

firefox-esr to be upgraded
That’s surprising because, with only Ubuntu sources (Canonical) checked, firefox-esr is not a package supplied by Ubuntu.

Can you show us all the third party sources used previously?

38

my bad - oops, under ‘other software’ only http://ppa.launchpadcontent.net/mozillateam/ubuntu/ noble main is also checked as I have been manually updating it only w/o any corruption using Software & Updates.

39

from terminal w/nautilus working and not corrupted:

~/Desktop$ nautilus
** Message: 16:19:21.572: Connecting to org.freedesktop.Tracker3.Miner.Files
Gsk-Message: 16:19:22.335: Failed to realize renderer of type ‘GskNglRenderer’ for surface ‘GdkWaylandToplevel’: OpenGL ES 3.0 is not supported by this renderer.

^C

…and then just it comes up, normal, navigation w/o issues :expressionless_face:

40

I did a bit of research about GSK-RENDERER and found some comments about older PCs here

The possible solutions seem to be starting nautilus with a terminal option e.g.

GSK_RENDERER=cairo nautilus

GSK_RENDERER=gl nautilus

MESA_LOADER_DRIVER_OVERRIDE=kms_swrast nautilus

I can only suggest that you try them on your PC and see if one is superior.
Then , we should be able to change Exec=nautilus --new-window %U in usr/share/applications so that you can launch the application via the icon

41

I already launch it using the icon - works in both the uncorrupted version (current state before updater runs) and the corrupted version - comes up ‘fine’ in both scenarios… just with the corrupted version it starts blinking on and off, stops responding, etc as soon as you try to do anything with it like switch folder, copy, etc.

Also, there’s the incidents after nautilus has been corrupted, when wanting to download say a file on firefox and it locks up/crashes when the ‘files’ type popup comes up asking where to save it… same with any application that needs to open, save, etc your work…