KiCad Crashing when opening SCH or PCB

[PapaJ]

I’m not sure what’s going on here but I had a recent Ubuntu update and now KiCad SCH and PCB files will not open. I can open the “project manager”, “image converter”, “calculator tools” and “plugin and content manager”. All other apps crash with a existing or new project.

gerbview and pl_editor (Drawing Sheet Editor) both core dump when I try to launch them.

Application: KiCad x86_64 on x86_64

Version: 7.0.5-4d25ed1034~172~ubuntu20.04.1, release build

Libraries:
wxWidgets 3.2.1
FreeType 2.10.1
HarfBuzz 6.0.0
FontConfig 2.13.1
libcurl/7.68.0 OpenSSL/1.1.1f zlib/1.2.11 brotli/1.0.7 libidn2/2.2.0 libpsl/0.21.0 (+libidn2/2.2.0) libssh/0.9.3/openssl/zlib nghttp2/1.40.0 librtmp/2.3

Platform: Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS, 64 bit, Little endian, wxGTK, ubuntu, x11

Build Info:
Date: May 27 2023 23:08:47
wxWidgets: 3.2.1 (wchar_t,wx containers) GTK+ 3.24
Boost: 1.71.0
OCC: 7.5.2
Curl: 7.88.1
ngspice: 38
Compiler: GCC 9.4.0 with C++ ABI 1013

Build settings:
KICAD_SPICE=ON

[PapaJ]

I tried to uninstall and reinstall 7.0.6 but the PPA doesn’t appear to have 7.0.6 in it yet.

[jmk]

Are you sure about that?
https://www.kicad.org/download/linux/

Mine downloaded on July 2.
Version: 7.0.6-rc3-202307021204~7efda5fbbd~ubuntu22.04.1, release build

[PapaJ]

I went to: Install on Ubuntu | KiCad EDA but the instructions look the same.

[PapaJ]

There are some intresting messages when trying ot grap the PPA:

$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:kicad/kicad-7.0-releases
[sudo] password for jacob: 
 This PPA will be the Official PPA KiCad 7.0 releases.
 More info: https://launchpad.net/~kicad/+archive/ubuntu/kicad-7.0-releases
Press [ENTER] to continue or Ctrl-c to cancel adding it.

Hit:1 https://cli.github.com/packages stable InRelease
Get:2 http://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable InRelease [3,569 B]                                                                                                                       
Hit:3 https://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb stable InRelease                                                                                                                                   
Hit:4 https://packages.microsoft.com/debian/10/prod buster InRelease                                                                                                                          
Err:5 https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/balena/etcher/deb/ubuntu focal InRelease                                                                                          
  402  Payment Required [IP: 18.65.3.111 443]
Get:6 http://packages.microsoft.com/repos/code stable/main arm64 Packages [72.6 kB]                                                                                                             
Ign:7 http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu disco InRelease                                                                                                                                           
Hit:8 http://linux.dropbox.com/ubuntu disco Release                                                                                                                                             
Hit:9 https://linux.teamviewer.com/deb stable InRelease                                                                                                                                         
Hit:10 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal InRelease                                                                                                                                      
Get:11 http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-security InRelease [114 kB]                                                                    
Hit:12 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-updates InRelease                                    
Hit:14 http://ppa.launchpad.net/kicad/kicad-6.0-releases/ubuntu focal InRelease                       
Get:15 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu focal-backports InRelease [108 kB]                         
Hit:17 http://ppa.launchpad.net/kicad/kicad-7.0-releases/ubuntu focal InRelease                                                                
Hit:16 https://hub-dist.unity3d.com/artifactory/hub-debian-prod-local stable InRelease
Reading package lists... Done
E: Failed to fetch https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/balena/etcher/deb/ubuntu/dists/focal/InRelease  402  Payment Required [IP: 18.65.3.111 443]
E: The repository 'https://dl.cloudsmith.io/public/balena/etcher/deb/ubuntu focal InRelease' is no longer signed.
N: Updating from such a repository can't be done securely, and is therefore disabled by default.
N: See apt-secure(8) manpage for repository creation and user configuration details.

[PapaJ]

I suspect that message are just related to balena/etcher and not KiCad itself, so I wan’t too worried about the messages.

[jmk]

https://www.kicad.org/help/system-requirements/

Ubuntu 20.04 is showing as unsupported by Kicad. Maybe this is your problem?

[PapaJ]

I’m on Ubuntu 20.04.6 LTS. LTS shows support.

I saw a update to Ubuntu come in this morning and I suspect that broke it.

[PapaJ]

Oh, supported until May 2023…

[jmk]

Yeah, that’s what I noticed.
I can’t help any further with the crashing problem. You may have to wait a few hours 'till Europe wakes for better advice.

[davidsrsb]

20.04 is one LTS out of date, so likely to have a few wxWidgets and Python compatibility problems

[PapaJ]

It seem as if the balena/etcher PPA was jamming up my update process. I disabled it by commenting out all the lines in the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/balena-etcher.list file and the update could complete and KiCad now works again. I’m still trying to push through to get 22.04 LTS installed but some other PPA issue is preventing this at the moment.

[PapaJ]

It seems that in the Ubuntu upgrade process it will disable out unnecessary PPA’s and re-enable them when its done. I think the upgrade process re-enableed by blelena-etcher PPA’s and this was keeping Ubuntu from Upgrading to 22.04.