Bug#922236: gnome-software: Gnome software stucked in endless startup loop

[Cyril Richard]

Package: gnome-software
Version: 3.30.6-4
Severity: important

Dear Maintainer,

gnome-software is stucked at startup, displaying 'Software catalog is being loaded'.

It should be related to the fact that packagekit has a problem:

sudo systemctl status packagekit
* packagekit.service - PackageKit Daemon
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/packagekit.service; static; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: signal) since Wed 2019-02-13 15:04:42 CET; 12s ago
  Process: 2720 ExecStart=/usr/lib/packagekit/packagekitd (code=killed, signal=ABRT)
 Main PID: 2720 (code=killed, signal=ABRT)

Doing this, will repair packagekit:

    sudo rm /var/lib/PackageKit/*.db
    sudo systemctl restart packagekit.service
    sudo pkcon repair

But as soon as I restart gnome-software, packagekit is down again.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: buster/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (500, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.19.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/8 CPU cores)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_OOT_MODULE, TAINT_UNSIGNED_MODULE
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=C (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

Versions of packages gnome-software depends on:
ii  appstream                                    0.12.5-1
ii  apt-config-icons                             0.12.5-1
ii  dconf-gsettings-backend [gsettings-backend]  0.30.1-2
ii  gnome-software-common                        3.30.6-4
ii  gsettings-desktop-schemas                    3.28.1-1
ii  libappstream-glib8                           0.7.14-1
ii  libatk1.0-0                                  2.30.0-2
ii  libc6                                        2.28-6
ii  libcairo2                                    1.16.0-2
ii  libfwupd2                                    1.1.4-1
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0                           2.38.0+dfsg-7
ii  libglib2.0-0                                 2.58.3-1
ii  libgnome-desktop-3-17                        3.30.2.1-1
ii  libgspell-1-1                                1.6.1-2
ii  libgtk-3-0                                   3.24.5-1
ii  libgtk3-perl                                 0.034-2
ii  libgudev-1.0-0                               232-2
ii  libjson-glib-1.0-0                           1.4.4-2
ii  libpackagekit-glib2-18                       1.1.12-1
ii  libpolkit-gobject-1-0                        0.105-25
ii  libsecret-1-0                                0.18.7-1
ii  libsoup2.4-1                                 2.64.2-2
ii  packagekit                                   1.1.12-1
ii  software-properties-gtk                      0.96.20.2-1

Versions of packages gnome-software recommends:
ii  fwupd  1.1.4-1

Versions of packages gnome-software suggests:
pn  apt-config-icons-hidpi         <none>
pn  gnome-software-plugin-flatpak  <none>
pn  gnome-software-plugin-snap     <none>

-- no debconf information