[Zotero 7 Beta] Zotero 7 fails to start after latest Manjaro update, possible Nvidia issues

Yulia_St

Before I describe the issue: yes, I'm aware that it is an Nvidia driver issue, but of all my applications only Zotero 7 is affected. I searched Manjaro and Arch forums and couldn't find anything, apart from one very confusing thread related to another application. The intersection of Manjaro and Zotero users is pretty small, so I decided to ask here before delving into the mess of contradictory advice and incomprehensible (for me) commands, which Nvidia issues usually lead to....

The situation.
I have been using Zotero 7 Beta on Manjaro KDE for a couple of months without any issues. I skipped a couple of Manjaro update rounds and finally did a full system update yesterday. So far everything works fine, except Zotero 7.

The issue.
Zotero 7 fails to start. When I double click it, nothing happens. I ran zotero file in the terminal and got the following:

src/nv_gbm.c:242: GBM-DRV error (nv_gbm_create_device_native): nv_common_gbm_create_device failed (ret=-1)
/home/user/Downloads/Zotero_linux-x86_64/zotero: line 18: 15762 Segmentation fault (core dumped) "$CALLDIR/zotero-bin" -app "$CALLDIR/app/application.ini" "$@"

Then I ran zotero-bin in the terminal, with this result:

src/nv_gbm.c:242: GBM-DRV error (nv_gbm_create_device_native): nv_common_gbm_create_device failed (ret=-1)
ExceptionHandler::GenerateDump cloned child 18946
ExceptionHandler::SendContinueSignalToChild sent continue signal to child
ExceptionHandler::WaitForContinueSignal waiting for continue signal...

Other information.
I'm running the latest beta build. After the issue started, I re-downloaded Zotero 7 from the beta release page in case the version I've been using was not the latest. The issue is the same both for the version I've been using these two months and for the freshly downloaded one.

Current Nvidia driver version: 545.29.06

Plugins: currently I only have BetterBibTex in Zotero 7

Stable Zotero 6.0.27 works normally. I went through the list of all my applications, and nothing else is affected.

Edit: it seems that the latest stable Zotero 6.0.30 AUR build also has this issue: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/zotero-bin

I understand that Zotero team's resources are limited, and obscure Nvidia driver issues on Linux may not be a priority, but if anyone has any ideas, I would be very grateful!

dstillman

If you have an Nvidia control panel or something like that, you'd want to set it to treat Zotero the same way it treats Firefox.

https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/driver-version-for-linux-545-29-02-thunderbird-failed-to-start/271738/2 suggests this might be fixed when we update Zotero 7 to the Firefox 115 base, which we're hoping to do soon.

Yulia_St

@dstillman, thank you very much for your response! Yes, I have Nvidia control utility but don't see anything related to Firefox there. It has an "Application Profiles" option enabled, but no specific profiles are listed. I also looked through Nvidia config file - again, no mention of Firefox.

Well, since it's almost certainly a Firefox issue, I can just wait until it gets resolved. I can do some things around Linux confidently enough, but graphics driver is not one of them, and it looks like waiting is the easiest option here. Interestingly, I never had this issue with Firefox itself, probably because I have a habit of skipping Manjaro updates. I now have Firefox 120.0.1 installed, no issues there.

For now I'm going back to Zotero 6.0.27 version. Obviously I won't be updating to the latest stable, can't afford to lose access to Zotero completely.

Other than this issue, my experience with Zotero 7 has been very positive, can't wait for the stable version so I could recommend it to my students.

dstillman

Note that the only change to the official releases between 6.0.27 and 6.0.30 was a security fix. There's no reason you shouldn't be able to use 6.0.30 if 6.0.27 worked, unless something else changed in the AUR package.

Yulia_St

@dstillman, you are right, tried it, and 6.0.30 works normally. I usually download directly from Zotero website. Official package works just fine, so I don't really see the point in using AUR builds...

Yulia_St

For anyone who may be interested, I found a solution (which may be a workaround but so far everything works). A few cases of the same problem recently appeared on Arch and Manjaro forums, all dealing with completely different applications.

I finally solved the issue by adding nvidia_drm.modeset=1 parameter to grub, as described in this post on Manjaro forums: https://forum.manjaro.org/t/how-to-add-nvidia-drm-modeset-1-kernel-parameter/152447/4

Now Zotero 7 works normally again.

Obviously, changing grub parameters should come with a warning, but I hope anyone running Zotero on Linux already knows this. :)