We are running Rocky Linux 9.7 with the GNOME Classic desktop environment, and our users connect to their workstations using PCoIP Zero Clients.
We are experiencing an intermittent issue where, at random times:
Desktop icons disappear after login or during an active session.
In some cases, the desktop becomes unresponsive or freezes.
The issue is not consistent and does not affect all users every day. It occurs randomly across different users and systems, making it difficult to reproduce.
Our environment:
OS: Rocky Linux 9.7
Desktop Environment: GNOME Classic
Client: PCoIP Zero Client
Authentication: Active Directory domain users
We have already tested using standard GNOME instead of GNOME Classic on a few machines and are currently monitoring the results.
Has anyone experienced a similar issue with GNOME Classic or PCoIP sessions on Rocky Linux? Any suggestions on troubleshooting steps, known GNOME Shell issues, or logs that we should focus on would be greatly appreciated.
Yes, it also happens with users who log in directly without PCoIP, but it is very rare.
We have around 600 Rocky Linux users. For users logging in directly, we have seen this issue only 5–6 times in a month.
However, with PCoIP, the issue is much more frequent. Around 200 users are using PCoIP, and approximately 5–6 users are affected daily with either a desktop freeze or a black screen.
When the desktop freezes, the Mattermost desktop application is usually the only application that opens automatically at startup. During the issue, if we press Alt+F2, enter r, and restart GNOME Shell, the desktop starts working again and the missing desktop icons reappear.
So, the issue can occur without PCoIP as well, but it is significantly more frequent for users connected through PCoIP.
Check session type is wayland a) local login, b) remote login echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE
if you get this issue on local login, it sounds like you have some non-standard setup, otherwise every RHEL user worldwide would be getting the same issue. Do you have everything set to Rocky 9.7 defaults?
Gnome does quite a lot of logging
journalctl --user -b
check how it looks when a user first logs in, then record exact time of the issue and check the same logs again, compare entries related to gnome.
There were some changes to the graphics stack in 9.8, but it doesn’t mean those changes are related to this issue.