Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1080205
In Process
H2ONaCl
Asked: 2018-10-02 22:22:24 +0800 CST

Nautilus not starting promptly

  • 772

Rarely but very annoyingly Nautilus will stop responding from the Launcher. I have experienced this on two very different machines: a rack server (dual SSD, RAID 1, 8 real threads) as well as a notebook (single SSD, 4 thread, 8 hyperthread).

The busy icon will be displayed and Nautilus will not start. On the server, eventually Nautilus will work, perhaps 30 seconds later. On the notebook it didn't work after 30 seconds so I rebooted.

When this happens there is nothing else going on that can account for the sluggishness.

Sometimes the problem persists indefinitely, that is, until reboot.

What is the fix for this problem?

Edit: This is probably relevant: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1569970

Edit This problem was first noticed with 16.04 and it is still a problem with 20.04. This problem is seen on machines set with swapping disabled or swappiness set to the very lowest possible value.

nautilus 16.04 20.04

2 Answers

  1. Yes, this brings back memories (from my time on 16.04).

    Whenever Nautilus went unresponsive (not starting, just spinner), I went with a quick Ctrl+Alt+t & killall nautilus, which brought satisfactory results. But this is mentioned in the launchpad link that you added.

    Regarding Gnome desktop on 20.04, in this post alternatives are also mentioned, such as nautilus -q and even reloading the Gnome-shell via the Run command dialog: Alt+F2 then r then Enter.

    I considered this forced restart of the application a sufficient remedy, because 1.) it evaded the need to reboot, 2.) all in all, the glitch did not happen too often.

    Back in the day I was not Linux-savvy enough to look up logs for clues. But I would assert for certain that the swap had never played a role in my cases, as I have plenty of physical memory and according to indicator-applet and later gnome-shell-extension-system-monitor my swap never had to be used.

    Update:

    You could try this:

    sudo apt-get install --reinstall nautilus-data

    Update 2:

    Yet another way to force restart Nautilus (apparently more popular?):

    # Get the PID with:
ps awx | grep nautilus

# Then:
sudo kill -TERM <PID here>

    Additionally: do you have the habit of using plain sudo nautilus? (Admittedly I was guilty of it.) If you do too, it would be a priority to part with that habit, because it can only cause trouble.

    • 1

  2. Try to reinstall Nautilus

    Here is how to do it:

    sudo apt autoremove nautilus
sudo apt install nautilus
    • -1