I have an ubuntu 18 04 (updated to 20 04 1 LTS while trying to fix issue) in virtualbox, and it started to crash since today, i think it started after i ok'ed a software update (minor, not distro upgrade). The gnome shell terminates, i get back to the login. It mainly seems to happen when i open a webbrowser, but also other situations, eg. opening an unconfigured thunderbird.
A few times, i also got different error windows within gnome "system error detected" or similar: [update] I did a separate Question on the different error-messages: 'System Program Problem Detected' vs "Sorry, Ubuntu * has experienced an internal error" [/update]
At first, i tried different things like apt-get update/upgrade, where i got some Hash Sum mismatch errors . Lots of experimenting with clear and --fix-missing got me around this, but the crashing persisted. So after a snapshot in virtualbox, i did the upgrade to 20 04, hoping that would fix the unknown problem along the way.
But no, it did not.
I found some tips recommending to look at the output of journalctl -e and other logfiles. But there's way too much stuff, and i don't know what to look into and what to look over.
in /var/log/boot.log i see some fails,
Failed to start Snap Daemon. [repeatedly]
Failed to start Docker Application Container Engine. [repeatedly]
Failed to start Wait until snapd is fully seeded.
Failed to start containerd container runtime.
Failed to start GRUB failed boot detection.
i see some logs in /var/crash:
_usr_bin_gnome-shell.1000.crash
_usr_bin_gnome-software.1000.crash
_usr_lib_gdm3_gdm-session-worker.0.crash
_usr_lib_policykit-1_polkitd.0.crash
How could i get closer to finding the problem's source?
@heynnema's comments:
Wayland and Switcheroo, not that i know of. It is a default 1804 install.
A propos Switcheroo, i am on a Dell Precision with Quadro M2000M. Switchable Graphics is "off" in the bios, i tried "on", same effect.
~$ dpkg -l *irtualbox*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-========================-============-============-=================================
un virtualbox-guest-dkms <none> <none> (no description available)
un virtualbox-guest-modules <none> <none> (no description available)
~$ ls -al ~/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions
ls: cannot access '/home/toro/.local/share/gnome-shell/extensions': No such file or directory
~$ ls -al /usr/share/gnome-shell/extensions
total 20
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Okt 7 17:52 .
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096 Okt 7 17:56 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Okt 7 17:52 desktop-icons@csoriano
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Okt 7 17:45 ubuntu-appindicators@ubuntu.com
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 Okt 7 17:45 ubuntu-dock@ubuntu.com
Virtualbox runs on latest win10x64. I tried different graphics Settings with and without 3d accel., Made no difference.
