Ghostwriter crashes on Fedora 40 workstation

I have tried opening a file
using Ghostwriter, several times,
the program opens,
but it keeps on crashing after typing even one letter,
any solution?

There are two versions available for installation, RPM and Flatpak, have you tried both? Does it crash in both versions?

Added ghostwriter

Should it now work out with Ghostwriter, you might want to give Apostrophe a try, given that it’s a GNOME app and you’re on Fedora Workstation edition (and probably using GNOME DE).

2 Likes

Yes, both did not work,
and the good thing about
Ghostwriter is that you can add photos
In your text

  1. Are You really on a workstation version?
    head -n 2 /etc/os-release

  2. Is everything updated? Which version of ghostwriter?
    ghostwriter --version | tail -n 4

  3. Try to launch it from terminal and see if it writes something back after crashing.

  4. There’s --disable-gpu option, try to launch it from terminal with that option. ghostwriter --disable-gpu

head -n 2 /etc/os-release
NAME=“Fedora Linux”
VERSION=“40 (Workstation Edition)”

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ghostwriter --version | tail -n 4
[ 0.281 6757 ghostwriter ] INFO Backup files will be stored in “/home/emmanuelninos/.local/share/ghostwriter/backups/”
ghostwriter 24.08.1

ghostwriter --disable-gpu
[ 0.221 8548 ghostwriter ] INFO Backup files will be stored in “/home/emmanuelninos/.local/share/ghostwriter/backups/”
[ 0.902 8548 ghostwriter qt.qpa.wayland] WARNING eglSwapBuffers failed with 0x300d, surface: 0x0
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

this command also opened ghostwriter,
but when I started typing, it crashed

@ninos, you didn’t elaborate on this, but it seems you are running KDE instead of Gnome?

It might be a Plasma bug as is mentioned here on the Arch BBS.

I’m using gnome 46.5, on Fedora 40 workstation,
and I always update my system

Screenshot from 2024-10-10 13-31-38

Ah right, then Ghostwriter is a KDE app, i didn’t realise that.

I asked about system (workstation) and version because mine didn’t crash. And I haven’t used it since f38. Anyway, I made sure that I’m using same version and everything worked fine. This warning before core dump shouldn’t bother You. … ghostwriter qt.qpa.wayland] WARNING eglSwapBuffers failed with 0x300d, surface: 0x0 I have the same warning but ghostwriter works.

Do You have ABRT enabled? You’d be warned about crash in notifications. Usually with some more info.

Then I installed and tried it on another computer, and it crashed, and I found that it is a known problem. You can see it here: https://retrace.fedoraproject.org/faf/reports/1020020/

But, as a possible temporary solution, You may try this first: Search if You have a ~/.config/kde.org/ghostwriter.conf file. If not, create both kde.org dir and ghostwriter.conf file inside. Write next two lines in file and save it.

[Preview]
lastUsedExporter=cmark-gfm

Then open ghostwriter and try typing.

2 Likes

Your temporary solution is unfortunately over and above my head, as I am not tech-savvy.
I suppose I will uninstall ghostwriter.

Thanks for your help, though.
It may help somebody else,
In the future.

1 Like

It’s just creating a simple text file in a directory two levels under home (with eventual creation of directory). If .config is hidden in Files, just press Ctrl+H and it will show up. It’s not a rocket science. But, on the other hand, one can write Markdown docs in any text editor. :slight_smile:

I’m just chiming in in case that anyone stumbles up on this post and has the flatpak version like me. This temporary solution still works, but you need to create both the kde.org folder and the ghostwriter.conf inside of it at ~/.var/app/org.kde.ghostwriter/config/ instead of ~/.config/. Hope I could help!

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I have Silverblue installed on a virtual machine, but don’t have time to explore it in a more serious way. So I don’t know about flatpak version.

Thanks! This worked for me. Is there a KDE bug report about this?

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I don’t know about KDE bug report on this (I use Gnome), but I’ll try first with fresh installation on a f41 workstation that I upgraded old comp this night. Ghostwriter was not installed on that machine (nothing inherited from old installation), so we’ll see if the problem is already fixed. Bunch of “kf6” packages are also pulled as a dependency, so I’ll write soon when everything finishes and I try it. Stay tuned. :slight_smile:

Replying to myself (it was considered silly on Usenet). :slight_smile: It seems that it’s fixed now. Ghostwriter installed kde.conf directory under .config, didn’t crash when I started typing, and even saved a file without any issues. So, one solution is to upgrade fedora to latest version (that would be f41). Or, if on a previous version, just create ~/.config/kde.org/ghostwriter.conf manually.

HTH

P.S.

I guess that this step is superfluous.