I’m using Evolution 3.54.1 (Flatpak) on Fedora 41 with Gnome 47. Since an update last week, Evolution won’t start properly. It pretends to, but then stops without showing up (no window, no warning). I was hoping the next update (just a few days ago) would help, but it didn’t. In the meantime, I tried to find a solution on the internet or at least a clue as to what is going wrong. But unfortunately without success.
So, here’s what I have (some console output with the start command for Evolution and two checks before and after to see what is running):
It seems to be running, but, as said before, there is no window with the Evolution GUI appears.
Evolution does not start with a newly created user either, so I don’t think it is because of my user data. I have also reinstalled Evolution, again without success.
Does anyone have any suggestions on what else I could try or what information could be useful here? Help would be very much appreciated.
(Edit: Translated the German text in the console output)
Problem is WebKit is passing --sandbox-a11y-own-name to an older version of flatpak-spawn that doesn’t support it. WebKit is doing a version check in FlatpakLauncher.cpp:
#if USE(ATSPI)
RELEASE_ASSERT(isInsideFlatpak());
if (checkFlatpakPortalVersion(7)) {
auto busName = launchOptions.extraInitializationData.get<HashTranslatorASCIILiteral>("accessibilityBusName"_s);
GUniquePtr<gchar> a11yOwnNameArg(g_strdup_printf("--sandbox-a11y-own-name=%s", busName.utf8().data()));
flatpakArgs.append(a11yOwnNameArg.get());
}
#endif
But apparently checkFlatpakPortalVersion(7) is not adequate? I’ll ask around.
So after some discussion with Georges, the problem is WebKit is stuck checking the Flatpak portal version but this doesn’t actually reflect the version of flatpak-spawn that is available. Fedora has updated the portal to a new version, but failed to update flatpak-spawn. There’s no easy fix on WebKit’s side. Fedora needs to:
Update flatpak-xdg-utils to 1.0.6
Rebuild the F41 Flatpak runtime, which Evolution is using
Hi,
as the data is not shared between Flatpak and host system (RPM)
version, switching between the two may cause a problem.
Michael, would there help to disable sandboxing for the WebKit in the
Flatpak sandbox? As a temporary workaround, until the things are
updated, as you said. Like this:
flatpak kill org.gnome.Evolution
WEBKIT_DISABLE_SANDBOX_THIS_IS_DANGEROUS=1 flatpak run org.gnome.Evolution
If running, it can be used to make a backup (File->Back Up Evolution
Data) and restore it in the host system version. By the way, Fedora 41
contains the latest stable version of the Evolution. I suggest to
switch to it, also because you’ll get much better integration with the
desktop (because functions like checking what apps are installed and
which to use to open attachments are not possible from the sandbox).
Alternatively, uninstalling the Fedora Flatpak and running the Flaptak
version from Flathub.org might probably work too. That also preserves
the user data, because it’s just Flatpak, only from different source,
built with different libraries. Make sure you also flatpak kill org.gnome.Evolution after the uninstall of the Fedora
Flatpak, to make sure a new Flatpak sandbox with the new bits is
started.
@poc Thank you for that hint. Installation worked and Evolution is starting as expected.
But: I did a test backup right after installation of the Fedora repo version. And that backup failed, saying the archive was corrupt and could not be verified. I did that twice without changing or receiving anything and got archives with different sizes. So, I don’t know if I can trust this version.
Thank you again for your help.
After a few tests, I finally installed Evolution from Flathub. It works, stable as far as I can see now, and backups work too.
Just a quick thank you @fretiol for starting this thread, opening the bug report and reporting back with what worked for you! This probably saved me hours of searching and debugging!
I am also happily using the Flathub installation of Evolution, now. I could simply uninstall the Fedora Flatpak repository version (keeping existing configuration and data as is), then switch to the Flathub version in the Software app, and install that. All I had to do was provide my passwords, but everything else worked fine out of the box.
I have been using Evolution on Fedora 39 for some time without errors.
Just upgraded a few days ago to Fedora 41 with Evolution 3.54.2. Now evolution.bin SIGTRAPs every time it is started from the GNOME icon.
I have investigated this problem with Problem Report and also a terminal window with top.
My tentative conclusion is that it is my PC with its 2017 BIOS and 2017 Intel HD graphics system or that its a Lenovo ideaCentre and that I have a hardware incompatibility.
When backtrace tries to decode the coredumps using gdb from /var/lib/coredump etc etc the report process never ends. Instead the swap file maxes out and the system simply runs out of memory with 14.2 gigabyte of virtual memory allocated to gdb and 5 minutes processor time too.
My expertise in low level code assembler was PDP-11 years ago and I am no Linux or GNOME expert. Just a user now.
Hope this helps as I’d like to get Evolution working again.
When backtrace tries to decode the coredumps using gdb from
/var/lib/coredump etc etc the report process never ends. Instead the
swap file maxes out and the system simply runs out of memory with
14.2 gigabyte of virtual memory allocated to gdb and 5 minutes
processor time too.
Hi,
Flatpak has flatpak-coredumpctl. Make sure you uninstall debuginfo
for the WebKitGTK, it’s too large and causes the problems you see with
the gdb. I guess it’s downloaded in the ~/.cache/debuginfod_client/,
feel free to delete it for now (I guess it uses multiple gigabytes),
and when GDB asks to download the debuginfo tell it “No”. Or run it as:
DEBUGINFOD_URLS='' gdb .....
Hope this helps as I’d like to get Evolution working again.
Did you read the above comments, please? There are multiple hints what
to do.
The bugfixes as mentioned above in the referred bugzilla report have been pushed into the Fedora repositories now and I’ve updated and Evolution now works fine. Thanks everyone for your helpful infomation!!
