Bug#1070837: gnome-shell: Last Gnome-Shell upgrade crashes logged session

[Simon McVittie]

Control: tags -1 + moreinfo

On Fri, 10 May 2024 at 12:08:27 +0200, Julien Negros wrote:
> In Bookworm last gnome-shell upgrade 43.9-0+deb12u1 -> 43.9-0+deb12u2
> closes current logged session. Same issue with Bullseye
> (3.38.6-1~deb11u1 -> 3.38.6-1~deb11u2). Doesn't look like an actual
> crash in logs : [...] But rather a GDM restart.

I did not experience this when upgrading several bookworm GNOME machines,
and one bullseye virtual machine. My GNOME session continued to run until
I rebooted the machine manually.

In general I would recommend rebooting the system anyway after installing
security updates in core library packages like libglib2.0-0, otherwise
running programs and sessions will remain vulnerable.

Are you sure you were not using some tool like checkrestart or needrestart
that detected gdm3 as a service that was affected by the security-fixed
versions of libglib2.0-0, and offered to restart it for you?

In needrestart's default configuration, it will default to not
restarting gdm3 and other known display managers (this is set up in
$nrconf{override_rc}, in /etc/needrestart/needrestart.conf), but if they
are explicitly selected to be restarted, it will assume you are aware of
the consequences and do as you ask.

I don't know whether checkrestart has similar mechanisms.

If you *do* restart gdm3, then it is probably expected that active GUI
sessions managed by gdm3 will be terminated - that's why needrestart avoids
doing this by default.

    smcv