Recently I was doing some benchmarking on my Ubuntu 22.04 PC, and as part of that benchmarking, I tried setting the CPU performance profile to performance. In the old days, this was not an issue, but it seems that modern Ubuntu only 'knows' about balanced and power-saver. Apparently performance is forbidden these days!
$ powerprofilesctl list
* balanced:
Driver: placeholder
power-saver:
Driver: placeholder
The problem was, I had set the profile to performance:
$ powerprofilesctl set performance
But suddenly the 'Settings' GUI app would no longer open (at least not after I had opened it and clicked into the 'power' section). A reboot didn't work, and even reinstalling control center (sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome-control-center) didn't help!
When I tried opening the settings GUI from the command line, I got the following critical error:
$ gnome-control-center display
(gnome-control-center:4710): cc-power-profile-row-CRITICAL **: 20:12:10.458: cc_power_profile_row_get_radio_button: assertion 'CC_IS_POWER_PROFILE_ROW (self)' failed
**
power-cc-panel:ERROR:../panels/power/cc-power-panel.c:1122:performance_profile_set_active: assertion failed: (button)
Bail out! power-cc-panel:ERROR:../panels/power/cc-power-panel.c:1122:performance_profile_set_active: assertion failed: (button)
Aborted (core dumped)
After finding this issue in the Gnome bug tracker, I found that the problem was that the version of the control center I had in my Ubuntu release seems to have a bug. When it encounters the 'performance' setting, it just crashes.
It looks like it was fixed recently, but the fix hasn't made its way into a stable Ubuntu release. So for now, the fix to getting Settings to display again is to set the power mode back into one of the two modes Settings is comfortable with, e.g. balanced:
$ powerprofilesctl set balanced
Now settings opens up, and I can move along with my day again :)
Comments
Oddly, Kubuntu 22.10 (which is derived from Ubuntu) still lets the user choose "performance" in the power profile applet.
Hey Jeff, love the work your doing. Thanks for the nice article about the settings manager, really helped alot.
geek with bugs lol
I wasn't hopeful that I'd find an answer when I googled about the settings app crashing, but I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that you had a write up about my exact issue!
My Ubuntu system has recently developed a problem that is similar, but different. When I try to open settings from the collection of icons at the top right, it spins for about 15 seconds (as if starting up) and then quits with no visible explanation. The behavior is the same whether I try general settings, Bluetooth settings, Account settings, or network settings; and also the same if I try to open Settings from the Applications menu. If I run gnome-control-center from a command line it does open, but the Bluetooth page does not find any devices. There are no messages.
Bluetooth settings used to work, and I can't identify anything that should have caused a change. How does one go about debugging something like this?
After reinstalling the Settings utility "sudo apt-get install --reinstall gnome-control-center" then setting to "balanced" alles OK
If you have set to "performance" using the terminal you will get the error!
Thanks