Cfrgtkky

Too often, when I attempt to login on Gnome 3.28.2 (Ubuntu 18.04.2 LTS Bionic Beaver (fresh install, but old home account recopied)), once the password is entered, the login window remains there, hanging. Nothing happens for minutes.

I then have to switch to a console and 'kill -9 '. This is not good publicity when this happens in front of my Windows and Mac friends.

In the best scenario, I get in after 5s. Why is it now instantly? I searched /var/log/syslog for clues, but I cannot find any. Sure there are plenty of gnome-shell errors, but none that seams related to my login problem.

Obviously, I want a solution to my problem. But I also want to learn how one can go to investigate the source of the problem. Which log file should I look into? How do I enable tracing in Gnome?

My hardware is a 'HP Elitebook Folio 9470m' equipped with an Intel GPU but I do not believe that this is relevant.

The gnome extensions I have installed are the following. One thing bizarre is that I disabled many of them, but the state does not seam to be saved. Next kill-9 gnome-shell I perform, the extensions return enabled. Seams like the only way to have the extensions state save is to logout?

drwxrwxr-x  3 hans hans 4096 May 20  2018 alternate-tab@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com

drwxrwxr-x  3 hans hans 4096 May 25  2018 appindicatorsupport@rgcjonas.gmail.com

drwxrwxr-x  7 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 apt-update-indicator@franglais125.gmail.com

drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 auto-move-windows@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com

drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 clipboard-indicator@tudmotu.com

drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 Feb 12 02:59 clock-override@gnomeshell.kryogenix.org

drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 Nov  6 07:56 CoverflowAltTab@palatis.blogspot.com

drwxrwxr-x  6 hans hans 4096 Feb 21 18:17 cpupower@mko-sl.de

drwxrwxr-x  2 hans hans 4096 May 21  2018 disable-screenshield@lgpasquale.com

drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 extensions@abteil.org

drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 Nov 28 01:28 gTile@vibou

drwxrwxr-x  2 hans hans 4096 Nov  7 06:16 Move_Clock@rmy.pobox.com

drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 Jun 22  2018 panel-osd@berend.de.schouwer.gmail.com

drwxrwxr-x  3 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 places-menu@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com

drwxrwxr-x  2 hans hans 4096 Feb  4 06:11 remove-dropdown-arrows@mpdeimos.com

drwxrwxr-x  2 hans hans 4096 May 25  2018 topIcons@adel.gadllah@gmail.com

drwxrwxr-x  4 hans hans 4096 Feb  4 06:11 topicons-redux@pop-planet.info

drwxrwxr-x  5 hans hans 4096 Nov 14 07:57 turnoffdisplay@simonthechipmunk.noreply.com

drwxrwxr-x  3 hans hans 4096 May 23  2018 user-theme@gnome-shell-extensions.gcampax.github.com

From the comments...

The user has ~20 GNOME Shell extensions, and one or more of them are causing serious hangs at login time. In looking at the list of extensions, some extensions even appear to be duplicates.

Recommended to turn off ALL extensions at https://extensions.gnome.org/local/ and see if the problem goes away. If it does, go back and enable 1-2 extensions at a time and see if the problem returns. This may take some time, as more than one extension could be giving problems. Because the biggest impact is at login time, you'll have to logout, and login again, to actually see if the problem(s) are solved.

This method has already proven to help solve the problem. The user just needs to narrow down the specific culprit(s). Also needs to reduce the total number of extensions.

Also, you can grep search /var/log/syslog for gnome-shell errors, as it may call out specific suspect extensions, like so...

grep -i gnome-shell /var/log/syslog*