GNOME Software crashes or closes immediately when searching

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1

Summary

  • Component: GNOME Software

  • Fedora version: Fedora 43 (Workstation)

  • GNOME Software version: 49.2-2.fc43

  • Issue: GNOME Software fails to start or closes immediately when performing a search

  • Status: Unresolved

Symptoms

  • GNOME Software does not launch, or

  • It starts but disappears immediately when searching for applications.

No visible GUI error message is shown.

What I have checked so far

Related discussion found online

I found a related GNOME Discourse thread:

However, it appears to be outdated and does not provide a working solution for this case.

Logs and diagnostics

journalctl output

I checked the system journal for GNOME Software related entries:

journalctl -xe | grep gnome-software

Relevant output:

PackageKit:ERROR:../lib/packagekit-glib2/pk-client.c:4695:pk_client_finalize:
assertion failed: (priv->calls->len == 0)

Bail out! PackageKit:ERROR:../lib/packagekit-glib2/pk-client.c:4695:
pk_client_finalize: assertion failed: (priv->calls->len == 0)

gnome-software killed by SIGABRT
Process gnome-software crashed and dumped core

Additional details from the coredump:

  • Crash occurs inside PackageKit

  • Assertion failure in pk_client_finalize

  • Multiple GNOME Software plugins loaded (packagekit, flatpak, fwupd, appstream, etc.)

  • Service restarts automatically but crashes again

This suggests a PackageKit-related issue rather than a pure UI problem.

Attempted remediation

Reinstalling packages

I tried reinstalling GNOME Software and GnuTLS:

sudo dnf reinstall gnutls gnome-software

The reinstall completed successfully, but the problem persists.

Questions

  1. Is this a known issue with GNOME Software 49.x on Fedora 43?

  2. Could this be a PackageKit + dnf5 interaction issue?

  3. Are there recommended debugging steps (e.g. running GNOME Software from a terminal with specific debug flags)?

  4. Is it advisable to temporarily disable PackageKit or switch to an alternative workflow (e.g. dnf/flatpak CLI only)?

Any guidance or pointers to relevant bugs would be appreciated.

Thank you for your time.

2

Based on the crash in pk_client_finalize, it resembles the bug discussed in this topic, and tracked on Bugzilla as #2422976.

PackageKit is still using a dnf4 backend, not dnf5.

Not sure about this, as there are already several reports in the Bugzilla ticket, and the first one has several detailed attachments. If you want to help debug, you might keep an eye on that ticket and see if the maintainers request anything.

Many users certainly find dnf and flatpak CLIs to be a more problem-free workflow.

3 Likes
3

Thank you very much for your answers.

The truth is that I’m not a very technical user when it comes to tracking down errors, but your answers have helped me understand.

Since I use the terminal more, it’s not much of a problem for me, but I’m very particular about things I don’t understand or that don’t work, and I don’t know why.

As far as I’m concerned, this is closed here.

4

FYI: Gnome Software app crashes every time I try and search for an app - #15 by fernando-debian

1 Like
5

Thank you for the reference.

From what I read here

I managed to reproduce this locally with the latest main of PackageKit. I could reproduce it by repeatedly typing stuff into gnome-software’s search bar and changing the search term before the results had fully loaded, in a bid to cause the refine jobs to be cancelled quickly. It only took a few attempts to reproduce that way.
tl;dr: The bug and fix for this is in PackageKit, there are no changes to be made in gnome-software. See pk-client: Fix assertion failure when PkClientState is cancelled early by pwithnall · Pull Request #930 · PackageKit/PackageKit · GitHub
Closing this issue as there’s nothing we can do in gnome-software. Distributions will probably want to pull the fix from pk-client: Fix assertion failure when PkClientState is cancelled early by pwithnall · Pull Request #930 · PackageKit/PackageKit · GitHub ahead of a PackageKit release, if they think it’s satisfactory.

I understand that the only thing left for non-developers to do is wait for the PakageKit update. Am I wrong?

1 Like
6

No, you are correct. Alternatively, you could also downgrade to the previous version of PackageKit according to this comment in Bugzilla.

7

You can downgrade to the previous version or use the command-line: dnf5 update —offline (see man dnf5-offline) for Fedora packages and sudo flatpak update (see man flatpak-update).

8

I don’t like it very much, but this has solved the problem:

sudo dnf downgrade packagekit

Thank you for your help.

Gnome Software crashing upon startup