nautilus (files app) takes long time to start on Ubuntu 18.04

Question

I found that in my Ubuntu 18.04, nautilus takes a long time to start. Here is the trace of running it on the command line:

$ time nautilus
Initializing nautilus-dropbox 2015.10.28
Error creating proxy: Error calling StartServiceByName for org.gtk.vfs.UDisks2VolumeMonitor: Timeout was reached (g-io-error-quark, 24)

real    0m40.316s
user    0m0.765s
sys 0m0.141s

I hope it might provide some clues to experts.

I also notice nautilus also causing other apps to start slow, such as gedit and chrome. I tried removing gvfs as well as nautilus will make starting other apps such chrome much faster. But I need a file manager.

I observe the same problem under Ubuntu 20.04 focal: 25s startup time… — bentolor, Jun 25 '20 at 08:20
Maybe https://askubuntu.com/a/1187377/94728 provides a solution — bentolor, Jun 25 '20 at 08:56
another good reference for the similar problem: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=230036 — Boson Bear, May 06 '21 at 13:03
I had the same problem on my machine, at home I have NAS and an entry in /etc/fstab and everything was ok. When I went to the office (no NAS available) the opening of the files always took ~30sec until the timeout. After commenting out the entries in /etc/fstab I had no more delays. — Dado, Aug 25 '23 at 08:04

Ehsan Mahdavi · Answer 1 · 2019-11-07T14:33:58.083

13

Update:

Problem solved, After some try and error I found the guilty package.

Starting from ubuntu 18.04.3 a package named xdg-desktop-portal-gtk has been added to the release.

I don't know what is the package used for. No other packages depend on it; And I did't need it. Purging it using purge command apt-get purge xdg-desktop-portal-gtk solved the issue. Below you can find the output for time command like time nautilus for opening and closing it ASAP which shows it take about 29 seconds to open before purge and about 2 seconds after purging it.

Before
real    0m28.818s
user    0m0.678s
sys 0m0.402s

After
real    0m1.943s
user    0m0.885s
sys 0m0.156s

P.S: purging the package had no side effect on my system and Ubuntu works smoothly as expected.

History:

Suffering from same issue in 18.04.3,

To get rid of the problem and still have 18.04, you might downgrade to 18.04.2.

I did that, 18.04.2 works smoothly as expected and I have 18.04 as you asked.

edited Nov 07 '19 at 14:33

answered Oct 27 '19 at 09:19

Ehsan Mahdavi

163

This does not really answer the question. If you have a different question, you can ask it by clicking Ask Question. You can also add a bounty to draw more attention to this question once you have enough reputation. - From Review – Mark Kirby Oct 28 '19 at 22:29
Its not a question!
I know its not a complete answer, but I had to downgrade to 18.04.2 to get rid of the problem. So I am using 18.04 (as the question needs).
– Ehsan Mahdavi Oct 30 '19 at 08:39
That's fair enough, the comment is an automated one and does not quite fit. Having said that, this answer could do with a bit more explanation. – Mark Kirby Oct 30 '19 at 09:39
@mark-kirby I tried an edit, hope it does the job. – Ehsan Mahdavi Oct 31 '19 at 13:13
Solved my issue on Ubuntu 20.04 as well. – Jonathan Nielsen Jan 11 '22 at 10:50
Also does the trick on Debian 11 – Julien May 21 '22 at 17:13

score 2 · Answer 2 · edited Nov 13 '20 at 10:25

2

I had similar issues after updating to Ubuntu 18.04. The solution for me was

Install net with sudo apt install samba-common-bin
then sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/samba/usershares/
and sudo chmod go+rwx /var/lib/samba/usershares/

edited Nov 13 '20 at 10:25

Tejas Lotlikar

2,945
5
17
26

answered Nov 11 '20 at 13:57

AKJ

131

nautilus (files app) takes long time to start on Ubuntu 18.04

2 Answers2