Recently, I tried again to work with Linux Mint when developing FPC. For FPC development I use normally lazarus from trunk, typical updated very few weeks. For navigation in the code I use "Find in files" from time to time, e.g. when looking where a certain internal error is thrown. I call the Find in files dialog by Ctrl-Shift-F. Sometimes, this action crashes Cinnamon completely: mouse still works but nothing is clickable anymore (Ctrl-Alt-Fx still works so the kernel is apparently still fine). Often, Ctrl-Alt-Esc can be used to restart Cinnamon after some time, sometimes Cinnamon de-freezes after some second and shows a dialog box that it crashed, restarted and is now in safe mode (or how it is called). The most annoying part of these crashes is that all windows are moved to the first virtual desktop besides that the fact that sometimes only a reboot helps to recover.

Does anybody have an idea where this could come from or how I could track this down (and no, the normal answer one gets when asking such things about linux that I should try KDE or Gnome or any other of the umpteen desktops, is not a solution).

It sounds like a bug in the desktop but:

Is Ctrl-Shift-F one of the keyboard shortcuts handled by the desktop in your configuration? Does Ctrl-Shift-F work as a shortcut in other applications?

Colin

It's called "Fallback mode", see below how I know this :-)

I have the same problems with Cinnamon. It is not only "Find in Files" that triggers this. A simple debug tooltip (when inspecting a value) can also trigger it.

I have it most often when debugging. I have learned to live with it, and Cinnamon runs most of the time in fallback mode, and even so it restarts every so often. Just as Florian, from time to time I must even switch to a plain text console (CTRL-ALT-F1 or so) and kill X, but this is rare.

The crash and switch to 'fallback mode' ("restart fallback mode" would be better named) happens easily once a day.

I'd try using linux mint "mate", but I'm not particularly looking forward to reconfiguring my machine. It takes days to get everything in working order again...

I'd like to report it to the Cinnamon maintainers, but have no clue how to report it, since it happens reliably, but unfortunately 'randomly' in the sense that I don't yet have a definite sequence of actions that triggers it.

If there are any tips how I can somehow get a trace to the Cinnamon maintainers, then I would appreciate it.

Michael.

[...] I have the same problems with Cinnamon. It is not only "Find in Files" that triggers this. A simple debug tooltip (when inspecting a value) can also trigger it.

Does an old Lazarus has this problem too? Can you find out which revision?

Mattias

I have always had this problem, ever since I switched to linux mint, which goes back to version 16, I think. I don't know what the lazarus version was at that point. 1.x series, I suppose.

Michael.

I remember experiencing that too, and that drove me away from using Cinnamon. In the end I went for something that is as minimal as possible, so it doesn't interfere with any debugging or software shortcuts etc. I decided to moving back to good old X11 window managers, not desktop environments. I settled on JWM (Joe's Window Manager) and have stuck with it for near 5 years now. It stays out of my way, it only occupies 2 or 3 keyboard shortcuts (which I configured) and only uses 8-15MB of RAM.

But yes, I feel your pain in having to set up a new system, or reconfiguring a desktop environment to what you are comfortable with. We are creatures of habit, and don't like change! :-)

Regards,
Graeme

I'll see if the xsession_error log brings something up.

Feels like a discussion from 1998 :)

Florian Klämpfl wrote

Feels like a discussion from 1998 :)

:-) True. JWM is still being maintained though, so it's not abandon-ware. Nothing wrong with good old X11 Window Managers. As somebody pointed out to me recently.... Of everything mankind has created, software is the only thing that doesn't decay over time. So there is nothing wrong with running "old" software either - if it gives the functionality you need.

On a side note:
Not that I restart my system or UI much, but it is awesome seeing my UI fully loaded near instantly after I type 'startx'.

Regards,
Graeme

Find in Files has some problem although it has not frozen the whole desktop earlier. There was a report from Jonas years ago: https://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=24351
but it could not be reproduced and was finally resolved. There is also a more recent report:
https://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=29925
Now I realized its backtrace mentions "exttools.pas". It may be related to this new report about LazBuild:
https://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=36318
where the bug is in external tool thread synchronization.

I have another problem with Find in Files sometimes. The dialog gets wrong initial text. See:
https://bugs.freepascal.org/view.php?id=34254
It may well be related because it happens so randomly.

Juha

This is part of the xsession errors just before a Cinnamon crash yesterday:

Cinnamon warning: Log level 8: meta_window_set_stack_position_no_sync: assertion 'window->stack_position >= 0' failed Cinnamon warning: Log level 8: meta_window_set_stack_position_no_sync: assertion 'window->stack_position >= 0' failed Cinnamon warning: Buggy client sent a _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW message with a timestamp of 0 for 0x4e954c9 (Debugger E) Gtk-Message: 11:20:41.193: GtkDialog mapped without a transient parent. This is discouraged.

(metacity:30763): metacity-WARNING **: 11:20:41.402: Invalid WM_TRANSIENT_FOR window 0x4e077ae specified for 0x4e00099 (Lazarus IDE v2.1.0 - testfprep).

(metacity:30763): metacity-WARNING **: 11:20:41.412: Invalid WM_TRANSIENT_FOR window 0x4e000ea specified for 0x4e000ca (Object Inspector).

(metacity:30763): metacity-WARNING **: 11:20:41.427: Invalid WM_TRANSIENT_FOR window 0x4e01a00 specified for 0x4e000f2 (Messages).

(nm-applet:28283): Gdk-CRITICAL **: 11:20:41.506: gdk_window_thaw_toplevel_updates: assertion 'window->update_and_descendants_freeze_count > 0' failed

The crash happened when a debug breakpoint was hit.

Maybe this is of some help to debug the issue.

Michael.

For the record: an update in the last weeks seems to have resolved the issue. I have no idea if the update was related to lazarus though or to cinnamon.