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Jos
Asked: 2020-05-08 00:46:37 +0800 CST

Journalctl filling up with Gnome shell errors

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As of early this morning, the journalctl log is filling up with literally millions of errors, each of the form:

mei 07 08:04:47 Ophelia gnome-shell[2197]: JS ERROR: TypeError: null has no properties
                                           _onFocusChanged@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/closeDialog.js:135:9
                                           popModal@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/main.js:587:22
                                           _continueDeactivate@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/screenShield.js:523:18
                                           deactivate/<@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/screenShield.js:493:44
                                           finish@resource:///org/gnome/shell/gdm/authPrompt.js:517:13
                                           finish@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/unlockDialog.js:845:26
                                           deactivate@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/screenShield.js:493:26
                                           _onUserBecameActive@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/screenShield.js:305:18
                                           _wakeUpScreen@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/screenShield.js:475:14
                                           _init/<@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/unlockDialog.js:554:69
                                           _countChanged@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/unlockDialog.js:272:18
                                           _sourceAdded/obj.sourceCountChangedId<@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/unlockDialog.js:201:18
                                           countUpdated@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/messageTray.js:791:15
                                           pushNotification@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/messageTray.js:852:14
                                           showNotification@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/messageTray.js:857:14
                                           processNotification@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/notificationDaemon.js:469:18
                                           _notifyForSource@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/notificationDaemon.js:355:16
                                           NotifyAsync@resource:///org/gnome/shell/ui/notificationDaemon.js:226:18
                                           _handleMethodCall@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/core/overrides/Gio.js:371:35
                                           _wrapJSObject/<@resource:///org/gnome/gjs/modules/core/overrides/Gio.js:404:34

The exact text after the first few lines is sometimes different, but they all look like this. The computer was on at that time but I wasn't doing any work on it. Besides, the gnome interface is noticeably slower today when I switch from one app window to another. If I run a top command in a terminal window and switch back and forth, I can clearly see the systemd-journal process eating 100% cpu for a while.

Does anyone notice something like this? Is this a bug in Gnome-shell?

Edit: the start of these errors coincides with an unattended-upgrades process. From the history, I can see that these packages were upgraded this morning:

firefox
firefox-locale-en
firefox-locale-nl
libapache2-mod-php7.4
libldap-2.4-2
libldap-common
php7.4-cli
php7.4-common
php7.4-json
php7.4-mysql
php7.4-readline
php7.4-opcache

None jumps out as the obvious culprit though.

gnome-shell systemd-journald 20.04

2 Answers

  1. Not a real answer to the question, but a workaround: deactivating and reactivating the Dash-to-Panel Gnome extension (on extensions.gnome.org) helped. That is, Alt + Tab switching from one application to another is now much faster, and systemd-journal does no longer take 100% after such a switch.

    I haven't checked whether journalctl still displays that many errors, as they can only be viewed one screen at a time and there are still millions of messages. In a few days I'll clean up the log (with the vacuum keyword that I also discovered today) and report back here if the messages, contrary to expectations, still appear.

    • 1

  2. Work around.

    2 Edits to same file. Turn off logging to system-d journal.

    FileName='/etc/systemd/journald.conf'

    ########## 1st edit ####################

    Line to replace

    FindLine='#RateLimitIntervalSec='

    Show the line to edit

    cat $FileName | grep --color -E "^|$FindLine"

    Replacement

    ReplaceWith='#RateLimitIntervalSec=0s'

    Replace

    sudo sed -i "/$REPLACE/c\$ReplaceWith" $FileName

    Show edited line

    cat $FileName | grep --color -E "^|$FindLine"

    enter image description here

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    ############### 2nd edit ##########################

    Line to replace

    FindLine='#RateLimitBurst='

    Show the line to edit

    cat $FileName | grep --color -E "^|$FindLine"

    Replacement

    ReplaceWith='#RateLimitBurst=0s'

    Replace

    sudo sed -i "/$REPLACE/c\$ReplaceWith" $FileName

    Show edited line

    cat $FileName | grep --color -E "^|$FindLine"

    Restart System-D Journal

    systemctl restart systemd-journald
    • -1