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IDProjectCategoryView StatusLast Update
0009741Kali LinuxKali Package Bugpublic2026-06-16 04:08
Reporternish0098 Assigned To 
PrioritynormalSeverityminorReproducibilityhave not tried
Status newResolutionopen 
Summary0009741: GNOME Shell crashes with "free(): invalid pointer" and logs user out on Wayland
Description

GNOME Shell crashed and the active Wayland desktop session was terminated,
returning me to the GDM login screen. This happened at least twice.

Observed crashes:

  • 2026-06-13 14:15:31
  • 2026-06-13 15:00:44

    Relevant journal lines:

    Jun 13 15:00:44 kali gnome-shell[135747]: free(): invalid pointer
    Jun 13 15:00:44 kali gnome-software[136138]: Lost connection to Wayland
    compositor.
    Jun 13 15:00:44 kali org.gnome.Nautilus[141619]: Lost connection to Wayland
    compositor.
    Jun 13 15:00:45 kali systemd[135354]: [email protected]: Main
    process exited, code=killed, status=6/ABRT
    Jun 13 15:00:45 kali systemd[135354]: [email protected]: Failed
    with result 'signal'
    Jun 13 15:00:46 kali gdm-password][135017]: pam_unix(gdm-password:session):
    session closed for user nishant
    Jun 13 15:00:46 kali systemd-logind[937]: Session 8 logged out.

    Earlier identical crash:

    Jun 13 14:15:31 kali gnome-shell[4002]: free(): invalid pointer
    Jun 13 14:15:31 kali systemd[3711]: [email protected]: Main process
    exited, code=killed, status=6/ABRT

    System details:
    OS: Kali GNU/Linux Rolling 2026.2
    Kernel: Linux 6.19.14+kali-amd64
    GNOME Shell: 50.2-3kali1
    GDM: 50.1-2
    Mutter: 50.2
    Session type: Wayland
    GPU: NVIDIA AD107GL [RTX 2000 / 2000E Ada Generation]
    GPU driver: nouveau
    Mesa: 26.0.6-1
    Xwayland: 24.1.12-1

    Enabled GNOME extensions:
    apps-menu, dash-to-dock, ProxySwitcher, ding, user-theme, ubuntu-
    appindicators, tiling-assistant, system-monitor, drive-menu, places-menu, top-
    panel-vpnip

    Enabled Mutter experimental features:
    scale-monitor-framebuffer, xwayland-native-scaling

    Expected result:
    GNOME Shell should not crash or terminate the user session.

    Actual result:
    GNOME Shell aborts with "free(): invalid pointer"; the Wayland compositor dies
    and GDM closes the user session, forcing a login again.

    Notes:
    No coredump was found in /var/lib/systemd/coredump.
    No obvious OOM, reboot, suspend, or kernel GPU reset was found around the
    crash time.

Attached Files

Activities

kali-bugreport

kali-bugreport

2026-06-14 08:26

reporter   ~0021767

You shall report this to the GNOME devs at their bugtracker, not to Kali :-)

arnaudr

arnaudr

2026-06-16 04:08

manager   ~0021770

I checked the Debian bugtracker and the upstream bugtracker, didn't find any issue that looks like this.

Please provide more details about leads to the crash: what were you doing, what applications were running, etc... You need to help to narrow down to something that triggers the crash.

And ultimately, as said above, you should open a bug upstream at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/. But you really need to narrow down, and ideally provide us with a way to reproduce the issue.

Issue History

Date Modified Username Field Change
2026-06-13 19:13 nish0098 New Issue
2026-06-13 19:13 nish0098 File Added: gnome-shell-crash-journal.txt
2026-06-14 08:26 kali-bugreport Note Added: 0021767
2026-06-16 04:08 arnaudr Note Added: 0021770