VSCode kills panel

Support & Help Requests
1

Does anyone else have their panel die when VSCode is minimised (or maximised)?

Here's the error I see in the log:

Mar 07 18:19:07 host kernel: traps: mate-panel[70461] general protection fault ip:7986d959d50d sp:7ffe8a297680 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.8000.0[7986d956f000+37000]
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2

Did this recently start happening? VS Code 1.98 (just released) now uses the custom title bar by default, in case that's causing a bug in MATE panel.

Try changing the titlebar style setting to native, to rule it out.

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3

It was happening before from time to time; now it happens every time. There's something in VSCode that's tripping up the panel, and even more so with their latest update. I have the global menu applet on my panel (i.e. vala-panel-appmenu); my early guess was that there's a problem with the two.

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4

Switching to the native title bar has stopped it from crashing every time; I'll wait and see if it 'intermittently' crashes as before. Hopefully it's stable.

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5

VS Code 1.98 is using Electron 34 too, in case you've got other Electron based apps to try.

Also assuming you're using the official build of VS Code instead of ones like VS Codium or Code - FOSS?

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6

Yeah; weird that no one else is experiencing the same bug.

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7

It still crashes from time-to-time. There must be a bug or incompatibility between VSCode and mate-applet-appmenu; as I'm seeing the following error in dmesg:

[ 2464.279780] mate-panel[10860]: segfault at ... error 4 in libappmenu-mate.so ...

Not much to go on; will file a bug with vala-applet-appmenu.

1 Like
8

Also with vscodium (version 1.104.16282) the mate-panel crashes every time when VSCodium is switched to the background using the key combination Alt + Tab.

In the syslog the following entry appears:

2025-09-29T15:09:18.389363+02:00 mnm-x1g4 kernel: traps: mate-panel[123933] general protection fault ip:771d5185750d sp:7ffcd73df640 error:0 in libgobject-2.0.so.0.8000.0[771d5182900I

Once the (top) menu has crashed, it disappears and a fraction of a second later the top menu bar comes back.

The suggestion to set VSCodium title bar settings to native solves the problem.

I was also considering to use plank-reloaded instead, but have not tried yet.

Please provide a link to the filed bug with vala-applet-appmenu.

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9
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10

I believe the bug is fixed upstream (at least partially). It's not easy to build. I raised some tickets about how to build on 25.04 and I got there in the end, but it's hard to follow, and not worth the trouble it'll probably cause.

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11

Just in case, someone is scripting this workaround, the following lines may help:

if [ -f "$HOME/.config/VSCodium/User/settings.json" ]; then
  if grep -q '"window.titleBarStyle": "native"' "$HOME/.config/VSCodium/User/settings.json"; then
    echo Configuration was already modified
  else
    # After opening bracket add one line lower the configuration
    sed -i "/^{/a \ \ \ \ "window.titleBarStyle": "native"" "$HOME/.config/VSCodium/User/settings.json"
  fi
else
  # File not there, create and populate accordingly
  mkdir -p "$HOME/.config/VSCodium/User"
  touch "$HOME/.config/VSCodium/User/settings.json"
  printf "{\n    "window.titleBarStyle": "native"\n}\n" > "$HOME/.config/VSCodium/User/settings.json"
fi
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