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Debugging GNOME Software

GNOME Software can be a little harder to debug than other applications, because it is typically started early in a user’s session, and it runs in the background.

Runtime debugging

If gnome-software is already running and you want to enable debug output from this point onward, run:

gnome-software --verbose

This will tell the running instance to enable verbose logging, without needing to restart.

By default, all log messages from gnome-software are sent to the systemd journal. Messages, warnings and errors are always logged; debug and info messages are only logged if verbose output is enabled.

To view the messages from the currently running gnome-software process, run:

journalctl --user --boot "$(which gnome-software)"

Start-time debugging

If you are starting gnome-software manually, you have a little more control over log output.

The --verbose command line argument will enable verbose mode for the newly started process. If run from a terminal, all log messages will be printed on the terminal rather than being sent to the systemd journal. As with journal logging, debug and info messages will only be printed if they are enabled.

An alternative to the --verbose argument are the following environment variables:

  • GS_DEBUG=1
  • GS_DEBUG_NO_TIME=1
  • G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=*

GS_DEBUG and GS_DEBUG_NO_TIME are equivalent to --verbose, enabling output of all log messages. Normally messages are printed with timestamps, but GS_DEBUG_NO_TIME disables that if you want to save space.

G_MESSAGES_DEBUG=all is equivalent to the above, but other values can be passed to it to filter debug log output to certain message domains.

Persistent debugging

Verbose debug output may be made persistent by modifying GNOME Software's systemd service to set an extra environment variable:

mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user/gnome-software.service.d
cat <<EOF > ~/.config/systemd/user/gnome-software.service.d/debug.conf
[Service]
Environment=GS_DEBUG=1
EOF
systemctl --user daemon-reload
systemctl --user restart gnome-software.service

Note that this will produce a lot of debug output which will consume a noticeable amount of space in your systemd journal over time.

Forcing an auto-update check

GNOME Software automatically checks for updates in the background based on a timer. To force a background auto-update check, this timer can be reset and the currently running GNOME Software instance will schedule a check:

for key in $(gsettings list-keys org.gnome.software | grep timestamp); do gsettings reset org.gnome.software $key; done