[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#853774: /usr/bin/nm-applet: nm-applet hard locking various programs (mostly chromium/qutebrowser)

[Robert Cross]

Package: network-manager-gnome
Version: 1.4.2-1
Severity: important
File: /usr/bin/nm-applet

Dear Maintainer,

I've been fighting to find the cause of this problem for about a week,
and I've finally found a way to reproduce this problem 100%.

Occasionally when network-manager establishes connection to a wireless
network (maybe wired too?), it will freeze one of my programs.

Here is how I reproduce this problem:

1. start chromium and qutebrowser.
2. browse to testufo.com to have a visual test of responsiveness
3. open up a termnal and run:
   `while true; do sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager.service; sleep 15; done`
-- NOTE: nm-applet is NOT started at this point, this can run forever with no
   problem
4. start nm-applet
5. chromium and qutebrowser will lock up within a minute

I have had other programs freeze in the same way:
* chromium
* qutebrowser
* terminator
* slack-desktop (not in repo)
* Enter the Gungeon (steam game)

Things I've tried to solve the issue:
* tried different window managers, (qtile vs awesomewm)
* tried with and without desktop compositor (compton)
* tried messing with intel graphics settings (uxa vs sna)
* checked basically everything in /var/log when a crash occurs. I can't
  find anything suspicious at all.

Finally, this may be related to bug #427393. Since I am using a more
lightweight desktop, it may be that only one of my programs are freezing
rather than my entire desktop environment.

Thank you for your time. I hope that we can track down this infuriating
bug.

Let me know if you need more information

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 9.0
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (650, 'testing')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.9.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages network-manager-gnome depends on:
ii  dbus-user-session [default-dbus-session-bus]  1.10.14-1
ii  dbus-x11 [dbus-session-bus]                   1.10.14-1
ii  dconf-gsettings-backend [gsettings-backend]   0.26.0-2
ii  libatk1.0-0                                   2.22.0-1
ii  libc6                                         2.24-8
ii  libcairo2                                     1.14.8-1
ii  libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0                            2.36.3-1
ii  libglib2.0-0                                  2.50.2-2
ii  libgtk-3-0                                    3.22.6-1
ii  libjansson4                                   2.9-1
ii  libmm-glib0                                   1.6.4-1
ii  libnm0                                        1.4.4-1
ii  libnma0                                       1.4.2-1
ii  libnotify4                                    0.7.7-1
ii  libpango-1.0-0                                1.40.3-3
ii  libpangocairo-1.0-0                           1.40.3-3
ii  libsecret-1-0                                 0.18.5-2
ii  lxqt-policykit [polkit-1-auth-agent]          0.11.1-1
ii  network-manager                               1.4.4-1

Versions of packages network-manager-gnome recommends:
ii  gnome-keyring                   3.20.0-3
ii  iso-codes                       3.74-1
ii  mobile-broadband-provider-info  20161204-1
ii  notification-daemon             3.20.0-1

Versions of packages network-manager-gnome suggests:
pn  network-manager-openconnect-gnome  <none>
ii  network-manager-openvpn-gnome      1.2.6-2
pn  network-manager-pptp-gnome         <none>
pn  network-manager-vpnc-gnome         <none>

-- no debconf information