text in torrent info tabs change after opening it to gibberish

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

This problem happens with transmission-gtk package. A workaround is to use transmission-qt package instead of transmission-gtk.

With transmission-gtk, when you open the torrent's properties panel, apart from scramble the texts, buttons, etc, there are GTK related errors spammed every few milliseconds (can be seen with journalctl). This is an example of these errors:

may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkLabel'
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: gtk_label_get_text: assertion 'GTK_IS_LABEL (label)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: gtk_label_set_text: assertion 'GTK_IS_LABEL (label)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkTreeModel'
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: gtk_tree_model_iter_nth_child: assertion 'GTK_IS_TREE_MODEL (tree_model)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: gtk_tree_model_iter_nth_child: assertion 'GTK_IS_TREE_MODEL (tree_model)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: gtk_widget_set_visible: assertion 'GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkToggleButton'
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: gtk_toggle_button_get_active: assertion 'GTK_IS_TOGGLE_BUTTON (toggle_button)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: instance with invalid (NULL) class pointer
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: g_signal_handler_block: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: gtk_toggle_button_set_active: assertion 'GTK_IS_TOGGLE_BUTTON (toggle_button)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: instance with invalid (NULL) class pointer
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: g_signal_handler_unblock: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkToggleButton'
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: gtk_toggle_button_get_active: assertion 'GTK_IS_TOGGLE_BUTTON (toggle_button)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkSpinButton'
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: gtk_spin_button_get_value_as_int: assertion 'GTK_IS_SPIN_BUTTON (spin_button)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: instance with invalid (NULL) class pointer
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: g_signal_handler_block: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: gtk_spin_button_set_value: assertion 'GTK_IS_SPIN_BUTTON (spin_button)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: instance with invalid (NULL) class pointer
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: g_signal_handler_unblock: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkToggleButton'
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi transmission-gt[9098]: gtk_toggle_button_get_active: assertion 'GTK_IS_TOGGLE_BUTTON (toggle_button)' failed
may 01 07:17:38 fpgrpi t...

>A workaround is to use transmission-qt

Some workaround...
And yes it does spew all these errors for me as well. Ultimately it just crashed.

I fully understand everything and all and I do try to withhold from ranting/ whining especially towards a "freebie" service, but managing to make a something of an essential piece of offered by default software nigh unusable EVEN THOUGH THE UPSTREAM HASN'T CHANGED BETWEEN THE LTS RELEASES (the -v switch gives the very same version/signature as in 20.04) must take the cake.

// Ubuntu Mate 22.04 xorg no compositing kisak mesa 5.18.3 mainline kernel

thank you for your bug report, could you share a torrent url which shows the issue?

The problem happens with all torrents. You can use this one:

https://releases.ubuntu.com/22.04/ubuntu-22.04-desktop-amd64.iso.torrent

Which locale are people seeing the issue on? The report recorded es_ES.UTF-8 but it works fine with that one here. Could you take a screenshot showing the issue? The properties dialog is displaying strings correctly and there is no popover dialog, could you describe which UI you use exactly?

I'm using locale es_ES but I just tested with locale en_US and fails as well.
The UI used is transmission-gtk.

Steps to reproduce the problem:
- Open transmission-gtk.
- Open a terminal and enter journalctl -f to see the errors that will be generated.
- Open a torrent file.
- Open the torrent Properties and check it's tabs. All seems to be correct...
- Close properties. At this moment there will be lots of gtk errors shown in the terminal.
- Open the torrent Properties again and check it's tabs: the info is scrambled across tabs.

I've attached a video showing the problem.

how do you close the dialog? it doesn't do it here weirdly

In the video I used the right upper X but using the Close button also triggers the errors.

I suspect you may have something installed in your test PC that may mask/fix the error.

Please test this: start the PC with the Ubuntu 22.04 LTS CD image. It came with transmission-gtk installed. Just use the option "Try Ubuntu" and repeat the procedure (don't need to install anything, just download the torret with firefox). It will fail... I just tested it and fails...

I've just tried on a xubuntu live session in a VM and there is no such issue, so maybe something which has to do the environment?

Could you try to install https://launchpad.net/~ci-train-ppa-service/+archive/ubuntu/4816-deletedppa/+build/23500684/+files/transmission-gtk-dbgsym_3.00-2ubuntu2_amd64.ddeb and get a valgrind log while triggering the issue?

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Valgrind

Why are you using xubuntu?

I just use distrotest.net with xubuntu 22.04 and Ubuntu 22.04.
- in xubuntu it works without error (attached screenshot).
- in Ubuntu (GNOME) it fails.

But problem was reported in Ubuntu (GNOME) from the beginning. Please, use Ubuntu (GNOME) instead of xubuntu and it will fail for sure.

The proposed packages didn't solve the problem... Seems to but after a reboot it starts to fail again. Please test the problem in Ubuntu as asked in the previous post.

valgrind.log file attached.

Thanks, it's a weird bug, the desktop environment in use shouldn't make it behave differently

It's not about a specific dialog or menu, it's like the translation strings are all over the place getting assigned to random buttons/places/whatever even in the file chooser dialog (guess it uses the GTK3 default one). E.g. a sentence reporting free space (or some such) gets assigned to a directory name (yeah it's as weird as it sounds).

I've set about to screenshot the issue(s) but this time it's crashed before I'd managed to cause some of these "interface inconsistencies". Duh.

user@ws:~$ transmission-gtk

(transmission-gtk:6640): Gdk-CRITICAL **: 19:30:27.016: gdk_window_thaw_toplevel_updates: assertion 'window->update_and_descendants_freeze_count > 0' failed

(transmission-gtk:6640): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 19:30:40.830: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkLabel'

(transmission-gtk:6640): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 19:30:40.830: gtk_label_get_text: assertion 'GTK_IS_LABEL (label)' failed

(transmission-gtk:6640): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 19:30:40.830: gtk_label_set_text: assertion 'GTK_IS_LABEL (label)' failed

(transmission-gtk:6640): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 19:30:40.830: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkLabel'

============================<snip>============================

(transmission-gtk:6640): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 19:30:42.831: gtk_spin_button_get_value_as_int: assertion 'GTK_IS_SPIN_BUTTON (spin_button)' failed

(transmission-gtk:6640): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 19:30:42.831: instance with invalid (NULL) class pointer

(transmission-gtk:6640): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 19:30:42.831: g_signal_handler_block: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed

(transmission-gtk:6640): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 19:30:42.831: gtk_spin_button_set_value: assertion 'GTK_IS_SPIN_BUTTON (spin_button)' failed

(transmission-gtk:6640): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 19:30:42.831: instance with invalid (NULL) class pointer

(transmission-gtk:6640): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: 19:30:42.831: g_signal_handler_unblock: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
Ошибка сегментирования

(Ошибка сегментирования is Russian for Segmentation fault)

When I launched it just a couple of minutes later in the same shell session it started cleanly without a single error message and seemed to behave normally...

Couldn't immediately reproduce with LANGUAGE=en_US will keep an eye...

Also, FWIW it hasn't picked up half of my torrents copied over from the previous installation, complaining that the source is gone - even though most are in the same directory and some of them it had managed picked up fine. For those that are supposedly are gone, I have to point to their directory again... No idea if this has anything to do with the GTK issues...

#6
>thank you for your bug report, could you share a torrent url which shows the issue?

almost defo has nothing to do with the torrents loaded... I'll test with a clean profile tho.

#8
>Which locale are people seeing the issue on?

ru_RU.UTF-8 in my case, will try to test with en_US.UTF-8

#14
>Please, use Ubuntu (GNOME) instead of xubuntu and it will fail for sure.

doubt it's caused by one specific environment, I'm on MATE

Sure enough I hit the problem with LANGUAGE=en_US transmission-gtk

http://file-st06.karelia.ru/7nqk5q/9b587eaf2d8bdc4c751ca979bbb321aa/a186e8a2a0f5d8d1249ad69c8a6648f4/1.png

I've noticed that the labels change to this mess in a fraction of a second after the widgets are drawn.

And there are thousands of error messages like above that are spammed into .xsession-errors

The same problem happens with LANG=C and standard ubuntu environment.
both Transmission-gtk 3.00-2ubuntu2 and Transmission-gtk 3.00-2.1

...
(transmission-gtk:2763463): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 23:29:33.568: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkTreeModel'

(transmission-gtk:2763463): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 23:29:33.568: gtk_tree_model_iter_nth_child: assertion 'GTK_IS_TREE_MODEL (tree_model)' failed

(transmission-gtk:2763463): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 23:29:33.568: gtk_tree_model_iter_nth_child: assertion 'GTK_IS_TREE_MODEL (tree_model)' failed

(transmission-gtk:2763463): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 23:29:33.568: gtk_widget_set_visible: assertion 'GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

(transmission-gtk:2763463): GLib-GObject-WARNING **: 23:29:33.568: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkToggleButton'

(transmission-gtk:2763463): Gtk-CRITICAL **: 23:29:33.568: gtk_toggle_button_get_active: assertion 'GTK_IS_TOGGLE_BUTTON (toggle_button)' failed
...

A week ago, after an update, the bug was magically resolved.

I kept on testing but I couldn't recreate the bug anymore.

Also other gtk based applications seemed to run a bit more reliable/solid (no crashes anymore in caja etc etc).

Could it be that some important library received an update/fix which also solved this problem ?

Just tried recreating the issue and I'm no longer getting the bug either.

Unfortunately I'm still having this problem.
Just tested in Ubuntu 22.04 amd64 and arm64. No updates or phased updates pending...

The bug is weird yes, I've never been able to trigger it on my installation. It could be that it depends of a library yes, of from the theme in use perhaps, or other factor...

This bug has also been affecting me in Devuan (testing) for several months, I'm not sure when it started specifically, but I believe the last 2 months i can say for sure.

Joined here because my searches in my distributor didn't turn up much data.

I want also to add that Dialog Preferences/Properties tabs have issues where changes by (confusing the data on this dialog), more or less like the above posts, clicking repeatedly the tabs brings the application to crash aswell sometimes.

Changing different GTK3 themes, even default Adwaita does not bring anything positively or a fix.

I gathered some data on the attach.

After some time without the bug manifesting itself it's happening to me again.

With two or three clicks on the properties tabs it is not noticeable or not happening let say, but if we click frequently one by one the tabs from left to righ or vice versa, confuses the text data through tabs also other parts of properties dialog, also if the clicking is not stopped transmission-gtk GUI crashes.

I haven't passed this matter on upstream or forums yet. I have lived with it without going to propeties dialog.

P.S. no other applications have this concern on my system.

FWIW, the Debian Sid package transmission-gtk_3.00-2.1_amd64.deb also exhibits this behaviour for me (Ubuntu MATE 22.04). Couldn't find a relevant bug report in the Debian BTS though.

Started happening to me as soon as I updated to Ubuntu 22.04.1. My locale is it_IT.

Can confirm this is still a problem on 22.04. I am attaching a syslog grep, which might be helpful. Switching to transmission-qt does work and shows no problems.

Same problem here since upgrading to Ubuntu Mate 22.04.
Transmission crashed nearly every time I add a torrent, and the Properties display sometimes changes when I move the window displaying it.
Reopening Transmission it usually runs without issue if I don't add a torrent and just leave it alone until the torrent is downloaded.

I have the same issue, attached console errors.
Does Canonical ever care to fix bugs after release?

Here is my wasteful "Me Too" post. I hope a fix is coming soon. I'm not capable, but would help if I could. constant crashing on 22.04 with gtk variant from mainline

as followup c.q. correction to #21:
After a good while without any problems, the bug is back again.
So I think it never went away but just wasn't triggered for a long period of time.

In my logs, this is repeated over and over again:

  invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkTreeModel'

  gtk_tree_model_iter_nth_child: assertion 'GTK_IS_TREE_MODEL (tree_model)' failed
  gtk_widget_set_visible: assertion 'GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

  invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkToggleButton'

  gtk_toggle_button_get_active: assertion 'GTK_IS_TOGGLE_BUTTON (toggle_button)' failed
  gtk_widget_set_sensitive: assertion 'GTK_IS_WIDGET (widget)' failed

  invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkLabel'

  gtk_label_get_text: assertion 'GTK_IS_LABEL (label)' failed
  gtk_label_set_text: assertion 'GTK_IS_LABEL (label)' failed

Regarding this, I am pretty convinced that the first line is the reason for the rest of the failures.

  invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkTreeModel'

This hints to a declaration of a void pointer which is handed over *uninitialized* to a GTK-object-something and therefore sometimes invalid and sometimes not.
This kind of thing can go randomly wrong (actually depending on what's in memory at that moment)
which would explain why the bug would sometimes pop up and sometimes not.

I can reasonably read and write "C" but I really can't wrap my head around any GTK code.
I swear if I could understand GTK code, I would personally wholeheartily get to the bottom of this.

Could someone report it upstream on https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues ? there is no active maintainer for that package in Ubuntu and it's clear from that bug that it isn't getting traction downstream so maybe upstream would be a better place

Unfortunately the upstream maintainers are busy with the release of version 4.0.0 (that's now in beta, and we won't see in Ubuntu until 24.04, I guess). They are not looking at old bugs because in version 4 a lot changed and they probably are not relevant anymore.

@Rapper, that's understandable, there is enough distributions on the current version and serie though that there would still be value in having a report upstream which is a distribution-neutral place, even if there is only discussions and interest from 'vendors' on the report

Here, this issue comes and goes. It felt like having a brutal prune of how many ISOs etc I was seeding got rid of it, but it's back again.

I did the grep above to see the messages in syslog.. ah, that's quite a lot, isn't it? How many lines?

user@pc:~$ grep 'transmission' -c /var/log/syslog
5399493

!!! Ah, that's why syslog is so large... and that's just the number of transmission-gtk messages in the past week.

Most are errors, repeated multiple times a second. Here's the output of the grep piped into tail:

Oct 22 20:28:25 pc transmission-gt[22015]: gtk_spin_button_set_value: assertion 'GTK_IS_SPIN_BUTTON (spin_button)' failed
Oct 22 20:28:25 pc transmission-gt[22015]: instance with invalid (NULL) class pointer
Oct 22 20:28:25 pc transmission-gt[22015]: g_signal_handler_unblock: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
Oct 22 20:28:25 pc transmission-gt[22015]: invalid unclassed pointer in cast to 'GtkSpinButton'
Oct 22 20:28:25 pc transmission-gt[22015]: gtk_spin_button_get_value_as_int: assertion 'GTK_IS_SPIN_BUTTON (spin_button)' failed
Oct 22 20:28:25 pc transmission-gt[22015]: instance with invalid (NULL) class pointer
Oct 22 20:28:25 pc transmission-gt[22015]: g_signal_handler_block: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed
Oct 22 20:28:25 pc transmission-gt[22015]: gtk_spin_button_set_value: assertion 'GTK_IS_SPIN_BUTTON (spin_button)' failed
Oct 22 20:28:25 pc transmission-gt[22015]: instance with invalid (NULL) class pointer
Oct 22 20:28:25 pc transmission-gt[22015]: g_signal_handler_unblock: assertion 'G_TYPE_CHECK_INSTANCE (instance)' failed

On 10-10-2022 I have, in 'startup applications', delayed the startup of transmission by 5 seconds.

It seems to have helped.
So far so good.
Let's see if it keeps on working this way.

Maybe this turns out to be a useful workaround.

OK forget about post #39
just encountered the bug again
delayed startup of transmission doesn't help.

Note to self:
disabled 'suspend' and 'screensaver' today to check if this transmission bug will still be triggered.
If not: we really got a problem because the underlying problem could be GTK related.
i.e. that GTK possibly loses some state after wakeup from suspend.

I'll check in when the problem persists or in two weeks if the problem doesn't appear anymore.

In reply to my own previous message #41

Problem persists, suspend/screensaver/lockscreen has no impact on the bug

Link to the bug upstream (github):

https://github.com/transmission/transmission/issues/4126

I downgraded transmission-gtk to 3.00-1ubuntu1~20.04.1 which is for me the last know good working setup.

Guess what ? It runs troublefree on 20.04 but on 22.04 (this version) it has the mentioned bug

Seems that changes in GTK/Gnome libs broke transmission-gtk after all (as i suspected earlier).

The only thing that seems to work is upgrading to transmission_4.00 beta and compile it.
(https://github.com/transmission/transmission/releases/download/4.0.0-beta.2/transmission-4.0.0-beta.2+rbceb368f1b.tar.xz)

I have 4.00 beta installed (tray-icon not yet working). I keep you posted.

Funny, I just came back to post that after all I've come to think it's something to do the way platform (GTK et al) libs are built in Ubuntu (Debian too?).

Because for me even the Arch binary exibits (on 22.04) the same broken behaviour.

BTW after this bug is "initiated" (by opening the torrent props window), even the GTK File chooser shows these misplaced labels all over it.

There is a new transmission version available. Hope it reach Ubuntu repo soon.

On Ubuntu 22.04, I have switched 'temporarily' to transmission-qt.
sudo apt install transmission-qt
Then you can create an alias to temporarily replace the faulty 'transmission-gtk'.
alias transmission='/usr/bin/transmission-qt'
transmission-qt doesn't exhibit the faulty behaviour (and CTRL+S is back).

As a temporary workaround I've installed packages "transmission-common_4.0.1-1" and "transmission-gtk_4.0.1-1" from Debian sid (unstable) and both works flawlessly in Ubuntu 22.10 so this bug is gone using these packages.

I hope these packages will be picked for Ubuntu 23.04 publish.

Note: the Debian package "transmission-gtk_4.0.1-1" have a broken dependence in Ubuntu 22.10. It requires "libevent-2.1-7 (>= 2.1.8-stable)" but in Ubuntu 22.10 the package is named "libevent-2.1-7a". It's not a problem because "transmission-gtk_4.0.1-1" is installed marked as a broken package, but it works flawlessly.

The new version is basically a rewrite, it's going to have to wait for next cycle in Ubuntu since we are past feature freeze and it's risky for that point in the cycle

How can it be considered "risky" when the current version is completely broken?

Having corruption of labels sometime doesn't mean the software isn't working...

That's not the only issue at all. High memory usage is also reported, and trying to use Transmission with corrupted labels (which happens very frequently in my case) will lead to crashes. So yeah, I currently can't use Transmission.