An AppImage stopped working (after a recent update?)

[hosadeeb]

Hi there,
I'm working on Mageia 9, regularly updated. All of a sudden, an AppImage stopped working completely. Extracting it makes no difference, though it made it easier to collect debugging info. It all happened rather recently, within the past week maybe, though I've been working with no problems at all for the past many months. So, I suspect an update might have caused some dependency to break.

Now, I did contact the software house which does the AppImage, and I'm still waiting for them to point me to the source of the problem. But, in the mean time, I'm just wondering if you can bear with me, too.

Would it be feasible if someone here checked the error messages I could collect?! Is there a way I could trace back which packages have been updated chronologically?!

A million thanks in advance for your cooperation and efforts!

Hosam Addeb Nashed

[morgano]

Is there a way I could trace back which packages have been updated chronologically?

Code: Select all

$ rpm -qa --last|less

[doktor5000]

It might help if you would mention which AppImage that is, for what software, and what the actual error message is.
Also the point of an AppImage is not rely on the libraries of the base system but ship them as part of the AppImage.

[hosadeeb]

Well, it's MuseScore Studio. And I'm hereby attaching the errors I'm getting on trying to launch it.

As I said, it used to work just fine until quite recently. So, there must have been a change within the system that caused it to stop.

Yes, I understand completely that an AppImage is a self-contained environment, but it also relies on basic system libraries.

[hosadeeb]

Is there a way I could trace back which packages have been updated chronologically?

Code: Select all

$ rpm -qa --last|less

Thanks a million!

[doktor5000]

FWIW you can also install MuseScore as flatpak: https://flathub.org/apps/org.musescore.MuseScore

For the error messages, similar ones for other AppImages are often caused by issues with the graphics driver, do you maybe use the nvidia driver and had an update recently for that ?
But for such issues it's probably better to ask/report upstream, via their Discord or via https://github.com/musescore/MuseScore/issues

[hosadeeb]

I did post my problem to both places: their forum, and the Discord channel.

Someone suggest that maybe it has something to do with openssl. So, I downgraded, to no avail, and then upgraded again.

My graphics card is indeed nvidia, but no upgrade to it has been done lately. Besides, this is the only AppImage that stopped working: LBRY and Viber are still working just fine, to name but two examples.

[hosadeeb]

Although I always hated Flatpak, I did install it and tried MSS. Well, I found it's an older version, and it lacks some important features (though they have been there for a couple of years...). Anyway, still stuck.

[hosadeeb]

OK!
I created a new user on my machine, and the AppImage worked!!!!!
So, obviously there's something that happened withing my home directory...
Now, the AppImages, as stated above, is essentially self-contained, but it has to be hindered by something!!!!
I removed the its working directory and tried, nothing...

[doktor5000]

I did post my problem to both places: their forum, and the Discord channel.

You may want to mention something like that and add some links at least for the forum, as it provides quite a bit of required details and context information.

[doktor5000]

I created a new user on my machine, and the AppImage worked!!!!!
So, obviously there's something that happened withing my home directory...

There are several candidates. Data under ~/.local or configs under ~/.config and cache under ~/.cache
You may want to check ~/.config/MuseScore or maybe check all musescore-related settings with

Code: Select all

find ~ -iname "*musescore*"

[hosadeeb]

I had checked two of them, now checked the third. Even ~/.var. Deleted everything. No improvement...

[doktor5000]

Well it's something in your home. You could run the appimage under ltrace and compare the output from your old user to the newly created user to check where it crashes.
Maybe it was simply one of the recently edited files that could not be read anymore for whatever reasons ? Or a temporary file?