Gnome Boxes has stopped working and will not launch

#1

Hi people

Gnome Boxes started playing up a few days ago; i.e., not opening various selected OS’ from the available Boxes menu, shutting down without warning etc… It’s now stopped working altogether. I’ve tried uninstalling and reinstalling a few times but to no avail.

Here’s the eos-diagnostic eos-diagnostic-180606_054715_UTC 0700.txt (795.6 KB)

BTW, I’ve given up completely on VLC Media Player. It still keeps shutting down, so there’s no point at all in even trying to use it. Binned!

Cheers

Jack75

#2 
Jun 06 05:40:39 endless gnome-boxes[3591]: unattended-setup-box.vala:149: Failed to lookup password for '/sysroot/home/john/Downloads/Linux Distros/Fedora-Workstation-Live-x86_64-27-1.6.iso' from the keyring: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown
Jun 06 05:40:42 endless gnome-boxes[3591]: gvir_storage_vol_get_info: assertion 'GVIR_IS_STORAGE_VOL(vol)' failed
Jun 06 05:40:42 endless kernel: gnome-boxes[3591]: segfault at 10 ip 00000000004f207a sp 00007fff2ce381f0 error 4 in gnome-boxes[400000+1c3000]

I suggest reporting this problem to the GNOME Boxes developers, either at https://github.com/flathub/org.gnome.Boxes/issues or at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-boxes/issues .

#3

As Gnome Boxes is supplied via the Endless App Center, shouldn’t this issue be dealt with by the Endless team?

I bought preinstalled Endless OS on my Acer Swift 3 only a few months ago, so I would really appreciate a little more direct help here.

Thanks.

Jack 75

#4

Some of the apps in the App Center are provided by Endless; some (including Boxes) come from Flathub.

#5

So you mean that all Endless users should now contact flathub direct for problems with all flathub apps found in the App Center, right?

I think it would be useful to flag this up to all Endless users.

However, as a support community, I’m disappointed that you cannot offer any help for what is, afterall, an OS aimed at people with little or no knowledge of OS maintainance.

Gnome was recently introduced for Endless users; it’s a great way for people to experience different OS’. Surely Endless has some responsibility for this, yes?

Please, help a fellow and others out here.

Thanks.

#6

Not necessarily. There may well be Endless-specific problems running apps from Flathub, but in many cases we will not be able to offer more help than suggesting you contact Flathub or the app developer.

In the specific case of GNOME Boxes, there actually was a bug in Endless OS 3.4.0 which meant Boxes didn’t work, which was fixed in 3.4.1. (I see from your diagnostic that you’re on 3.4.1.) I personally don’t know of any other Endless-specific issues in Boxes, and the information in the log doesn’t suggest any.

It’s very early days for the Flathub version of Boxes; it was only published on Flathub two weeks ago, and in the announcement its authors said:

The list [of issues] above is far from complete, and I would like to count on you to experiment with the Flatpak and report issues you might encounter. Use the label “flatpak” to collect points which you can later exchange for beers or other beverages of your choice. :wink:

So, I suggest you report this problem to them.

In general, we do offer help for Endless OS, as you’ll be able to see from other posts on this forum. And, in fact, a large number of apps on Flathub are published (and in some cases developed) by Endless developers, one of the Flathub administrators is an Endless developer, and so on.

But we do not control which apps are published to Flathub (286 today, and and the number is rising) and there’s a limit to what support we can provide when an app doesn’t work and the available evidence suggests it’s not a problem with Endless OS itself. Just as Google doesn’t provide support for the functionality of Android apps on the Play Store, nor can Endless provide full support for all the apps in our App Center.

The App Center does have a “Developer Website” link for many apps; for GNOME Boxes, it links to https://wiki.gnome.org/Apps/Boxes, which doesn’t really offer much in the way of “who to contact if you have problems”. I agree that this could be better signposted, there and elsewhere.

If you have time, could you re-install VLC, reproduce this problem, and collect another diagnostic file?

#7

I asked around and one thing you could try is closing Boxes, opening a terminal, and running it like this:

flatpak run --talk-name=org.freedesktop.secrets org.gnome.Boxes
#8

It goes from bad to worse.

Endless has been offering me multiple updates, including Boxes, on and off for the last 24 hours. One update was for Endless 3.4.2 as if it were a new release, which it is not. There’s nothing on here about this, so what’s going on with all the updates?

Boxes worked for a while - kind of - yesterday but after the most recent update this morning it has stopped again!!!

As you suggested, I’ve posted on the Gnome Boxes issues page, but haven’t received a reply as yet. https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-boxes/issues/216

Please fix this. My newish notebook comes with Endless preinstalled, so I can’t change the OS. Right now, Endless is being a constant pain.

Here’s the usual diagnostics and a screenshot that might help.

eos-diagnostic-180613_055304_UTC 0700.txt (844.3 KB)

Screenshot from 2018-06-13 05-40-31.png1920×1080 75.6 KB

Thanks.

#9

Still having problems, which have now spread to other parts of the OS.

I’m being bombarded with repeated updates from the App Center. Despite updating, the same updates keep reappearing. I’ve also received two updates to Endless 3.4.3 even though I can’t find any reference to this version here or anywhere on the web. What’s going on?

Boxes is still not working, and no one from https://github.com/flathub/org.gnome.Boxes/issues or at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-boxes/issues is responding to my requests fro help.

FYI my son’s Acer Swift 3 with Endless OS, bought at the same time as mine, is working perfectly.

I would really appreciate some help here. Here’s the diagnostics. eos-diagnostic-180614_144211_UTC 0700.txt (763.1 KB)

So I wake today to find yet another mass update available. I’ve lost count how many I’ve received in the last few days. Here’s a screenshot and yet another diagnostics.

Screenshot from 2018-06-15 05-42-19.png1920×1080 161 KB

eos-diagnostic-180615_054453_UTC 0700.txt (890.0 KB)

Boxes is still not working. Please help fix these problems. Thanks.

#10

Another day, and the problems still haven’t been resolved.

Here are today’s diagnostic and screenshot in the forlorn hope that someone from the support team might actually respond and help me out with this persistent problem.

eos-diagnostic-180616_062819_UTC 0700.txt (659.7 KB)

Screenshot from 2018-06-16 06-25-54.png1920×1080 72.3 KB

Thank you.

#11

I’m actually not in the support team; I pitch in on this forum when I can!

Is it always the same apps? It’s not unusual for apps to receive relatively frequent and ad-hoc updates, particularly the ones which come from Flathub (for which the update frequency is outside our control).

That said, just looking at the first item in the list, an update for Anki, this is a bit suspicious, since the Flathub package hasn’t been modified since March.

Jun 16 06:25:15 endless gnome-software[1059]: failed to call gs_plugin_refine_app on flatpak: failed to get permissions: Unable to load metadata from remote flathub: unknown error

I was about to say that this looks like a transient connection error, but if you’re getting this message a lot, something is more broken. I don’t think it’s (directly) related to your problem with Boxes.

If you see the same updates every time you launch the App Center, please try following the second set of instructions from this FAQ to get more detailed debugging output from it:

  1. Open Terminal
  2. Run killall gnome-software
  3. Run gnome-software --verbose > gnome-software-verbose.txt – this will launch the app center and gather a lot of debug output to a text file
  4. Reproduce the problem in the app center – in your case, try doing this:
  • Go to the Updates tab – from your description of the problem, I expect you’ll see the same set of updates again?
  • Click Update All; wait for the updates to be installed
  • Click the refresh button in the top-left corner of the app center – do all these phantom updates re-appear?
  1. Close the app center and return to the Terminal
  2. Press Ctrl-C
  3. Send gnome-software-verbose.txt to us

@jrocha is the app center expert – perhaps he’ll be able to help with this extra information.

I appreciate that Boxes upstream didn’t get back to you, but I’m afraid there’s still not much help we can offer you with this, for the same reasons listed above. The only other suggestion I have is to close Boxes, then delete the folder .var/app/org.gnome.Boxes in your home directory. You can do this from the file manager, or by copy-pasting this in a terminal (be careful to copy the whole command, to avoid accidentally wiping out data for other apps):

rm -r ~/.var/app/org.gnome.Boxes

This will erase all your VMs. On the basis that you said Boxes worked for a while but now crashes on launch, it’s possible some of its internal state has got messed up. If this does help, please pass this information on to the upstream bug.

If it doesn’t, run this in a terminal:

G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all flatpak run org.gnome.Boxes >boxes.txt 2>&1

And then attach the boxes.txt file here.

3.4.2 was released on Jun 11th. 3.4.3 was released 2 days later, on Jun 13th, with a single emergency bugfix. (I don’t know why the release notes have not been posted.) I don’t know why you would have seen either update twice, but your latest diagnostic shows you are running 3.4.3.

#12

Hi Will

Many thanks for your very comprehensive reply.

The phantom updates have disappeared. And yes, it was always the same apps. For example, Chrome was being “updated” every day.
Boxes is working.

Here are the two diagnostics you requested.
gnome-software-verbose.txt (1.6 MB)
boxes.txt (27.2 KB)

Thanks again for your invaluable help. Let’s see what happens…

John Hawkins

#13

Great, I’m glad both problems have gone away. If the phantom update problem recurs, please send us another verbose log from the app center!

I should have suggested that you keep the Boxes state directory somewhere, so that the Boxes developers could examine what internal state got messed up – my bad. If it stops working again, I can help you work out which bits are relevant to send to the Boxes developers. But fingers crossed it keeps working, of course.

1 Like
#14

10 posts were split to a new topic: Phantom updates in App Center

#15