System Settings – Fix Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Settings Not Opening After Adding System76/Pop PPA

20.04gnome-control-centerppasystem-settings

I'm trying to open System Settings but it won't open in any way.
Using GUI, Settings are trying to load for a moment and then they are gone.
Using Terminal (gnome-control-center), I get:

(gnome-control-center:8823): GLib-ERROR **: 14:44:15.433: ../../../glib/gmem.c:138: failed to allocate 13477064712 bytes
Trap Trace/breakpoint (core dumped)

I tried:

sudo apt-get remove gnome-control-center
sudo apt autoremove
sudo apt-get install gnome-control-center

With multiple reboots, but I had no result.

UPDATE!: Same errors persist BUT, when I type:

sudo gnome-control-center

(instead of just "gnome-control-center") suddenly System Settings appear! Is it a user permissions issue? Any suggestions?

UPDATE#2: After some system updates, sudo gnome-control-center now spawns "Segmentation fault".

Best Answer

Finally I found a solution!
The cause of this problem was pop-theme, that I installed once, plus its repository entry, that provided me the broken System settings (gnome-control-center). In order to solve this:

I installed Ubuntu desktop PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-desktop/ppa

I removed all System76/pop (and other trush) entries, with update-manager, leaving Ubuntu desktop the only one active.
Now that I have the proper repository entry added, I re-install gnome-control-center.
```
sudo apt install --reinstall gnome-control-center
```
Enjoy Gnome System settings!

Related Solutions

Gnome System-Settings – Settings vs System Settings

You can tweak these via the .desktop files (mostly) in the /usr/share/applications/ folder and you need Root/Admin priviledges for this purpose.

For instance, if you're sure, they are duplicate and this is the one you don't want, you can open the file unity-control-center.desktop there, and -as a safer method- merely add the line Hidden=true and/or NoDisplay=true instead of deleting it.

gnome – pop-theme Causes gnome-control-center Segmentation Fault

In my opinion there is a much better solution to that problem other than getting rid of a useful repository I personally like. What helped me is fixing the main repo priority. You may see that there are two repositories available for gnome-control-center package and the system76 is used now using a apt-cache policy gnome-control-center command:

gnome-control-center:
  Installed: 1:3.34.1-1ubuntu2pop1~1571679625~19.10~ef2ab1f
  Candidate: 1:3.34.1-1ubuntu2pop1~1571679625~19.10~ef2ab1f
  Version table:
 *** 1:3.34.1-1ubuntu2pop1~1571679625~19.10~ef2ab1f 500
        500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/system76/pop/ubuntu eoan/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     1:3.34.1-1ubuntu2 500
        500 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan/main amd64 Packages

See those 500s? That's the default repo priority and it's the same. Let's give the main repo a higher priority (I'm on Ubuntu 19.10 codename eoan, please use your distro's codename instead):

    $ apt-cache policy | grep o=Ubuntu | grep c=main | grep a=eoan,
     release v=19.10,o=Ubuntu,a=eoan,n=eoan,l=Ubuntu,c=main,b=i386
     release v=19.10,o=Ubuntu,a=eoan,n=eoan,l=Ubuntu,c=main,b=amd64

That release ... part is kind of a filter you may use to give a repo different priority. Create and edit (as a root) a file called /etc/apt/preferences.d/main_repo_priority to look like this:

    Package: *
    Pin: release v=19.10,o=Ubuntu,a=eoan,n=eoan,l=Ubuntu,c=main,b=amd64
    Pin-Priority: 1001

And now finally reinstall the gnome-control-center:

    sudo apt install --reinstall gnome-control-center

And double check that the correct version is installed:

    $ apt-cache policy gnome-control-center
     gnome-control-center:
       Installed: 1:3.34.1-1ubuntu2
       Candidate: 1:3.34.1-1ubuntu2
       Version table:
          1:3.34.1-1ubuntu2pop1~1571679625~19.10~ef2ab1f 500
             500 http://ppa.launchpad.net/system76/pop/ubuntu eoan/main amd64                                                          Packages
     *** 1:3.34.1-1ubuntu2 1001
           1001 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu eoan/main amd64 Packages
            100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Gnome System-Settings – Settings vs System Settings

gnome – pop-theme Causes gnome-control-center Segmentation Fault

Related Question