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parabola gnome troubleshooting

telur - about 3 years ago -

hello, im starting a thread for summarying and troubleshooting the gnome desktop in parabola. hope this can be usefull reference for other distro as well for building libre and privacy gnome desktop.

[current state: 13 feb 2021]
currently gnome desktop wont run in parabola if you enable nonprism repo or install your-privacy package. likely gdm will broken blank and upon a login with another display manager an error screen (called fail whale) will show up and forcing user to logout. in contrast gnome will run fine without those, tough i assume parabola users mainly will applied all parabola privacy package.

[pros]
some derivative desktop like budgie, deepin, regolith etc, depend on working gnome environment, fixing gnome will fix those others as well.

[environment]
tested on both systemd and openrc parabola iso with same result
tested on both stable and testing repo with problems still remains

[error cause]
1. obsolete gnome-settings-daemon (g-s-d) in nonprism repo
enabling nonprism repo will downgrade latest g-s-d into obsolete 3.34 version, this causing incompatibilities.
2. g-s-d depends on geoclue blocked by your-privacy.package
looks like g-s-d depends on some yet unknown parts of geoclue. removing geoclue altogether makes gnome desktop unusable altough it still runs fine with disabled geouclue installed.

[possible fix]
1. update latest g-s-d in nonprism repo or remove g-s-d from nonprism repo
i think the stock g-s-d is good enough, the only think that disabled nonprivacy settings still can be viewed by user (nonfree reference ? (still disabled setings has no effect wheter turned on or off)).
2. create a dummy geoclue with disabled service or remove g-s-d from your-privacy depedency conflict
disable internal geoclue location service in /etc/geoclue/geoclue.conf or mask geoclue to prevent it starting with "sudo systemctl mask geoclue" (computer need to be restarted to restart systemd).
3. bypassing logout error screen (aka fail whale)
in some circumtances gnome succesfuly reinitalized after the fail whale comes out, if you press super key, you can see funtioning gnome-shell running behind but gets blocked by fail whale screen (most my irritating moment), yet we dont know how to achieve this. it has something to do with /usr/lib/gnome-session-failed (main fail whale source), /usr/lib/systemd/user/gnome-session-failed.service and /usr/lib/systemd/user/gnome-session-failed.target .

[temporary fix, for regular user]
try this in order and dont logout in halfway process:
1. sudo pacman -Syu
2. sudo pacman -R your-privacy
3. sudo pacman -S gnome
4. sudo pacman -Rdd geoclue gnome-settings-daemon
5. sudo pacman -S your-privacy
6. sudo pacman -R your-privacy
7. sudo pacman -S geoclue
8. sudo systemctl mask geoclue
9. sudo pacman -S extra/gnome-settings-daemon
10. sudo reboot
this ensures you have the working libre and privacy gnome desktop, however you must redo these step whenever you want an privacy upgrade as well. if you have an advanced knowledge to solve the problem please help parabola developer to achive [possible fix]. finally here a screenshot of finely working libregnome:


[useful links]

https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/geoclue/geoclue/-/wikis/home
https://developer.gnome.org/geoclue/unstable/
https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/2580 Test report of [nonprism-testing/geoclue]
https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/2128 [nonprism/gnome-online-accounts]: Cannot start GNOME after activating nonprism
https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/1884 nonprism and gnome
https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/1870 [nonprism]: requires downgrades
https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/1645 GNOME desktop is broken
https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/1439 [nonprism/gnome-settings-daemon]: breaks GDM/GNOME
https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/1292 [gnome-session] Segfault after upgrading with nonprism enabled
https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/994 updated privacy blacklist: cascade effect on 'gnome-settings-daemon'
https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/919 Geoclue/Geoclue2 and their dependancies
https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/853


Replies (3)

parabola gnome troubleshooting - bill-auger - about 3 years ago -

2. create a dummy geoclue with disabled service

there has been much discussion about that

https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/2620

FWIW, my advice is to avoid using software like gnome, which is
so strongly coupled to a particular tools (systemd,
pulseaudio, webengine, whatever), and routinely adds
anti-features (geo-location, GUI logging, desktop<->web
integration)

beyond 'init-freedom', such strong couplings are problematic
for software freedom and the "UNIX philosophy" in general - that
in itself, is an anti-feature - those other anti-features are
most often problematic for privacy

the very reason why one would enable [nonprism] and install
your-privacy is to avoid running software which does not
prioritize privacy - likewise, the reason one would enable
[nonsystemd] and install 'your-initfreedom' is to avoid running
software which locks the system into a specific configuration,
or fails to function otherwise - these development practices
are either lazy, or freedom-hostile, or both

sure, there may be work-arounds, such as the recipe above - good
job finding one - several work-arounds for geoclue have been
proposed in the past; but that is my point - why bother working
around these anti-features - software which does not try to
force them onto users already, is less likely to do so in the
future

we can continue laboriously patching out these anti-features as
they arrive (when possible); but given that that their developers
already have such disregard for privacy and computing freedom,
there is a high likelihood of more anti-features being added
forever in the future; and it may not be viable to remove the
next ones - it is much wiser to choose software which has a
proven dedication to simplicity and efficiency (for desktops:
LXDE, MATE, and most any tiling WM, are good examples; for web
browsers: epiphany, qutebrowser, etc); and to avoid software
which is ever-bloating into the future, such as gnome, XFCE, and
KDE, and web browsers such as chromium and firefox

thats just to explain why neutralizing geoclue has not been a
high-priority; but it has merit - there has always been a very
simple solution: "dont use gnome"; and it is relatively rarely
that parabola users have asked for an alternate solution

RE: parabola gnome troubleshooting - bill-auger - about 3 years ago -

alextee just noticed that gnome can not be installed with 'your-initfreedom'; unless you use this command:

# pacman -S gnome --assume-installed=gnome-logs

the consequences of this are not yet known; but alex has not noticed any ill-effects of it

RE: parabola gnome troubleshooting - alextee - about 3 years ago -

I actually re-installed parabola with systemd because I wanted to use pipewire and couldn't get it to work with the openrc version, but other than that it seemed to work ok

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