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Rarely but very annoyingly Nautilus will stop responding from the Launcher. I have experienced this on two very different machines: a rack server (dual SSD, RAID 1, 8 real threads) as well as a notebook (single SSD, 4 thread, 8 hyperthread).

The busy icon will be displayed and Nautilus will not start. On the server, eventually Nautilus will work, perhaps 30 seconds later. On the notebook it didn't work after 30 seconds so I rebooted.

When this happens there is nothing else going on that can account for the sluggishness.

Sometimes the problem persists indefinitely, that is, until reboot.

What is the fix for this problem?

Edit: This is probably relevant: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/1569970

Edit This problem was first noticed with 16.04 and it is still a problem with 20.04. This problem is seen on machines set with swapping disabled or swappiness set to the very lowest possible value.

H2ONaCl
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2 Answers2

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Yes, this brings back memories (from my time on 16.04).

Whenever Nautilus went unresponsive (not starting, just spinner), I went with a quick Ctrl+Alt+t & killall nautilus, which brought satisfactory results. But this is mentioned in the launchpad link that you added.

Regarding Gnome desktop on 20.04, in this post alternatives are also mentioned, such as nautilus -q and even reloading the Gnome-shell via the Run command dialog: Alt+F2 then r then Enter.

I considered this forced restart of the application a sufficient remedy, because 1.) it evaded the need to reboot, 2.) all in all, the glitch did not happen too often.

Back in the day I was not Linux-savvy enough to look up logs for clues. But I would assert for certain that the swap had never played a role in my cases, as I have plenty of physical memory and according to indicator-applet and later gnome-shell-extension-system-monitor my swap never had to be used.

Update:

You could try this:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall nautilus-data

Update 2:

Yet another way to force restart Nautilus (apparently more popular?):

# Get the PID with:
ps awx | grep nautilus

Then:


sudo kill -TERM <PID here>

Additionally: do you have the habit of using plain sudo nautilus? (Admittedly I was guilty of it.) If you do too, it would be a priority to part with that habit, because it can only cause trouble.

Levente
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-1

Try to reinstall Nautilus

Here is how to do it:

sudo apt autoremove nautilus
sudo apt install nautilus
tux_in_the_box
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    How do you know that the program that describes itself as "Files" in the Help > About and is conventionally known by the name "Nautilus" with an uppercase "N" can be installed with an identifier with a lowercase "n". – H2ONaCl Feb 07 '19 at 04:52
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    @H2ONaCl Refer: GNOME Files - Wikipedia – Kulfy Feb 07 '19 at 20:17
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    I dealt with this issue on Arch, and I'm new enough to apt that I have no idea how to do it on Ubuntu, but what fixed it for me is definitely reinstalling BOTH nautilus and all its dependencies. Reinstalling nautilus by itself did not work. I bet google knows how to reinstall dependencies as well. – Nephilim Feb 08 '19 at 14:55
  • @Kuffy Wikipedia is inconsistent and uses both upper and lower case which is bizarre in a case sensitive operating system. This aint Windows. – H2ONaCl May 07 '22 at 21:31
  • @Nephilim To me it seems reinstalling is inferior to a reboot. What is superior to a reboot is a permanent solution. – H2ONaCl May 08 '22 at 21:34