Snap store font issue (and empty looking)

just re-installed Ubuntu 21.10

The snap-store seems a bit empty, and the font looks a bit pixelated.

Hopefully this is the right place to report this issue otherwise please point me to the correct github repo :smiley:

~$ snap --version
snap    2.53+21.10ubuntu1
snapd   2.53+21.10ubuntu1
series  16
ubuntu  21.10
kernel  5.13.0-20-generic
snap-store         3.38.0-64-g23c4c77  547    latest/stable/ā€¦  canonicalāœ“    -
1 Like

I noticed the same font issue. Itā€™s not just the snap store. Applications like Glade for GTK GUI dev have the same problem on Ubuntu 21.10.

name:      glade
summary:   Create or open user interface designs for GTK+ applications
publisher: Ken VanDine
store-url: https://snapcraft.io/glade
contact:   https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/glade/+bugs?field.tag=snap
license:   unset
description: |
  Glade is a RAD tool to enable quick & easy development of user interfaces
  for the GTK+ 3 toolkit and the GNOME desktop environment.
  
  The user interfaces designed in Glade are saved as XML and these can be
  loaded by applications dynamically as needed by using GtkBuilder or used
  directly to define a new GtkWidget derived object class using
  GTK+ new template feature.
  
  By using GtkBuilder, Glade XML files can be used in numerous programming
  languages including C, C++, C#, Vala, Java, Perl, Python, and others.
commands:
  - glade
snap-id:      inTv54jZXvqdPDNf8TaZNjpo7iTINib7
tracking:     latest/edge
refresh-date: 10 days ago, at 14:39 EDT
channels:
  latest/stable:    3.38.2-4-gd3ccee2a   2021-09-22 (393) 11MB -
  latest/candidate: 3.38.2-4-gd3ccee2a   2021-09-06 (393) 11MB -
  latest/beta:      ā†‘                                          
  latest/edge:      3.39.0-111-g6a9a8a94 2021-10-10 (408) 11MB -
installed:          3.39.0-111-g6a9a8a94            (408) 11MB -

Try switching to the beta channel, which is built from this branch: https://gitlab.gnome.org/Community/Ubuntu/gnome-software/-/commits/snap-store, to see if that improves things. For me, it does.

beta (at this moment!) is essentially the same code as stable, but updated to the core20 base.

I have the same problem (almost empty snap-store - ā€œeditorā€™s picksā€ only) on vanilla Ubuntu 21.10 installation.

$ snap --version
snap    2.53+21.10ubuntu1
snapd   2.53+21.10ubuntu1
series  16
ubuntu  21.10
kernel  5.13.0-20-generic

Iā€™ve switched to beta source (as well as edge source) - it didnā€™t changed anything.

However I see on dmesg (maybe it is a clue):

[ 4785.577928] audit: type=1400 audit(1636370376.149:255): apparmor="DENIED" operation="open" profile="snap.snap-store.ubuntu-software" name="/etc/PackageKit/Vendor.conf" pid=11327 comm="snap-store" requested_mask="r" denied_mask="r" fsuid=1001 ouid=0

Any suggestions?

Greetings, M

Kill snap-store by running snap-store --quit and run it again in the terminal.

If you see error messages like

11:37:16:0179 Gs  not GsPlugin error snapd-error-quark:10: status-code=500 kind=(null) message=cannot retrieve sections: got unexpected HTTP status code 403 via GET to "https://api.snapcraft.io/api/v1/snaps/sections"
11:37:16:0180 Gs  not handling error failed for action get-categories: status-code=500 kind=(null) message=cannot retrieve sections: got unexpected HTTP status code 403 via GET to "https://api.snapcraft.io/api/v1/snaps/sections"
11:37:16:0180 Gs  failed to get categories: no categories to show

then thatā€™s your categories problem. Itā€™s a different issue from the ugly font rendering.

So the issues is https://api.snapcraft.io/api/v1/snaps/sections returning 403 Forbidden.

OK.

$ snap-store --quit
$ snap-store
11:42:00:0641 dbind Couldn't connect to accessibility bus: Failed to connect to socket /tmp/dbus-IO3Mu2PBd0: No such file or directory
11:42:00:0695 Gtk Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
11:42:00:0696 Gtk Failed to load module "canberra-gtk-module"
11:42:00:0721 Gs  enabled plugins: desktop-categories, fwupd, os-release, packagekit, packagekit-local, packagekit-offline, packagekit-proxy, packagekit-refine-repos, packagekit-refresh, packagekit-upgrade, packagekit-url-to-app, appstream, desktop-menu-path, hardcoded-blocklist, hardcoded-popular, modalias, odrs, packagekit-refine, rewrite-resource, packagekit-history, provenance, snap, systemd-updates, generic-updates, provenance-license, icons, key-colors, key-colors-metadata
11:42:00:0721 Gs  disabled plugins: dpkg, dummy, fedora-langpacks, fedora-pkgdb-collections, repos
11:42:00:0783 Gs  /etc/PackageKit/Vendor.conf file not found
11:42:00:0954 Gs  not handling error failed for action get-updates-historical: failed to build result for cf09a352c4dc73e4fe0b193277db204ac980f40d
11:42:02:0167 Gs  adding wildcard app */*/*/*/org.gnome.Builder.desktop/* to plugin cache
11:42:02:0167 Gs  adding wildcard app */*/*/*/org.gnome.Calculator.desktop/* to plugin cache
11:42:02:0167 Gs  adding wildcard app */*/*/*/org.gnome.clocks.desktop/* to plugin cache
11:42:02:0167 Gs  adding wildcard app */*/*/*/org.gnome.Dictionary.desktop/* to plugin cache
11:42:02:0167 Gs  adding wildcard app */*/*/*/org.gnome.Documents.desktop/* to plugin cache
11:42:02:0167 Gs  adding wildcard app */*/*/*/org.gnome.Evince/* to plugin cache
11:42:02:0167 Gs  adding wildcard app */*/*/*/org.gnome.gedit.desktop/* to plugin cache
11:42:02:0167 Gs  adding wildcard app */*/*/*/org.gnome.Maps.desktop/* to plugin cache
11:42:02:0167 Gs  adding wildcard app */*/*/*/org.gnome.Weather/* to plugin cache
11:42:02:0372 Gs  not GsPlugin error snapd-error-quark:10: status-code=500 kind=(null) message=cannot retrieve sections: got unexpected HTTP status code 403 via GET to "https://api.snapcraft.io/api/v1/snaps/sections"
11:42:02:0372 Gs  failed to get categories: no categories to show
11:42:02:0372 Gs  not handling error failed for action get-categories: status-code=500 kind=(null) message=cannot retrieve sections: got unexpected HTTP status code 403 via GET to "https://api.snapcraft.io/api/v1/snaps/sections"
11:42:02:0372 Gs  hiding category games featured applications: found only 0 to show, need at least 9
11:42:02:0373 Gs  hiding category productivity featured applications: found only 0 to show, need at least 9
11:42:02:0881 Gs  Only 1 apps for recent list, hiding
11:42:02:0881 Gs  FIXME: Unknown progress handling is not yet implemented for GsProgressButton
11:42:02:0881 Gs  FIXME: Unknown progress handling is not yet implemented for GsProgressButton
11:42:02:0881 Gs  FIXME: Unknown progress handling is not yet implemented for GsProgressButton
11:42:02:0881 Gs  FIXME: Unknown progress handling is not yet implemented for GsProgressButton
11:42:02:0927 Gs  automatically prevented from changing kind on system/package/*/generic/org.gphoto.libgphoto2/* from generic to unknown!
11:42:02:0936 Gs  automatically prevented from changing kind on system/package/*/generic/io.github.feralinteractive.gamemode/* from generic to unknown!
11:42:03:0093 Gs  automatically prevented from changing kind on system/package/*/generic/org.a11y.brltty/* from generic to unknown!
11:42:03:0738 Gs  automatically prevented from changing kind on system/snap/*/runtime/io.snapcraft.core20-DLqre5XGLbDqg9jPtiAhRRjDuPVa5X1q/latest/stable from runtime to unknown!
11:42:04:0936 Gs  automatically prevented from changing kind on system/snap/*/runtime/io.snapcraft.bare-EISPgh06mRh1vordZY9OZ34QHdd7OrdR/latest/stable from runtime to unknown!
11:42:05:0441 Gs  automatically prevented from changing kind on system/snap/*/runtime/io.snapcraft.core18-CSO04Jhav2yK0uz97cr0ipQRyqg0qQL6/latest/stable from runtime to unknown!

As you mention it seems it is categories problem.

$ curl https://api.snapcraft.io/api/v1/snaps/sections
<html><body><h1>403 Forbidden</h1>
Request forbidden by administrative rules.
</body></html>

Regards, M

Letā€™s file a bug then: https://bugs.launchpad.net/snapstore-server/+bug/1950156 Please add info there (and ā€œme tooā€ it).

And it has just been solved by @wgrant; thank you very much.

I want to confirm that I got the same problems with the fonts, look pixelated and ugly

Even with the beta channel? Make sure to log out and log in again before testing after switching (or kill the snap-store process), or else it might still use the background process of the old revision.

Thanks @ppd the beta channel fix the ugly fonts!!

Did you know when itā€™s going to be promoted to stable?

I have no idea. Thatā€™s probably a good question for @kenvandine.