Daily random crashes on Linux Mint

[MaiaDereva]

Is there an existing issue for this?

• I checked and did not find my issue in the already reported ones

Describe the bug

Darktable crashes suddenly. Either it closes down or it freezes the computer.

Steps to reproduce

There is no clear sequence of steps to recreate the issue. In my view, this isn’t linked to any specific action. I'll try to explain what's happening with the more details I can to help understand.

I’ve been using Darktable since 2018. But for months now (probably at least two years, as I’m a patient person), Darktable has been crashing every time I use it. This happens very often when I’m exporting photos, but not exclusively. It can happen whilst scrolling through the darkroom, whilst processing a photo in the darkroom, or when I zoom in on a photo. At best, DT shuts down abruptly; at worst, it freezes the computer completely.

This happens with photos from different cameras, from my phone, and even with old JPG files from unidentified devices.

All this on a machine that ran it very well until this problem started (see PC specifications below). The computer’s SSD is practically empty apart from the OS. My photos are on a 1TB WD My Passport Ultra external hard drive, but it also crashes when I work locally with files on the PC’s SSD. I often use a 27-inch Iiyama Prolite monitor connected via HDMI. The crashes occur with or without it.

After each crash, the database is locked. So I have to unlock it and restart. Settings changed during the session that crashed are not saved (for example, the export size), but changes to the photos are.

Since the first crashes, I have tried:

• installing a newer version than the one provided by the OS, which is always several versions behind;
• using the Flatpak version;
• disabling OpenCL in the preferences;
• configuring the computer to use only the Intel graphics card and not the NVIDIA one, or to use the NVIDIA card exclusively (performance mode);
• switching to a different version of Linux Mint (the crashes have persisted across several kernel versions).

This has never solved the problem. It has been going on for so long that I have tried several versions of Darktable, right up to the latest 5.4.1, which I installed from the OBS repositories.

What's wrong? Can you help me?

I’m not an advanced user of either Darktable or Linux, so if there are any steps you need me to take to help us understand the problem better, please explain them step by step.

Expected behavior

Darktable should run without crashing

Logfile | Screenshot | Screencast

On the advice of a user on the French-language DT forum, I launched Darktable from the Linux command line using this command: darktable -d all | tee > /tmp/dt.log 2>&1

The resulting log file can be found here: https://acloud6.zaclys.com/index.php/s/R3JPKYjsbCdaS2P

Commit

No response

Where did you obtain darktable from?

https://software.opensuse.org/download.html?project=graphics%3Adarktable&package=darktable

darktable version

5.4.1 (and older)

What OS are you using?

Linux

What is the version of your OS?

Linux Mint Cinnamon 22.3 (and older)

Describe your system

My laptop is a six years old Lenovo Ideapad L340-17IRH Gaming. It has a 9th-generation Intel Core i5 processor (2.40GHz × 4), 8GB of RAM .

Are you using OpenCL GPU in darktable?

None

If yes, what is the GPU card and driver?

NVIDIA GP107M graphics card with 3GB of VRAM

Please provide additional context if applicable. You can attach files too, but might need to rename to .txt or .zip

I tried with or without using OpenCL, crashes occur in both cases. The log file above is without.

[pehar1]

I don't have time right now to look at the (huge) log file. My first guess would be a lack of memory. 8 GB is the recommended absolute minimum; with larger images and/or resource-intensive modules (including export), you can easily run into trouble.

[manu-p]

Hi, you can read on line 593:
1,0369 [dt_configure_runtime_performance] found a sufficient 64-bit system with 6794 Mb ram and 8 cores
I agree 8GB is the baseline, but this shouldn't be a reason for dt to crash.

What puzzle me is the end of the log with nothing to give a clue on why dt crashed.

I'm wondering if the reason would not have to do with dt, but rather something on the laptop such as heat or an h/w issue.

[jenshannoschwalm]

@manu-p you haven't been well-advised. Please provide a log with plain -d pipe, reading such a huge log is just a pain ...

[manu-p]

@manu-p you haven't been well-advised. Please provide a log with plain -d pipe, reading such a huge log is just a pain ...

I’m not the one who asked, but it was actually me who gave the advice – d all. :-D

I'm sure @MaiaDereva shall post a new more edible log.

@MaiaDereva, something like:
darktable -d pipe | tee > /tmp/dt.log 2>&1

And please make sure there's no other messages in the terminal when ft crashes. In this case, please copy/paste them here too.

[jenshannoschwalm]

I’m not the one who asked, but it was actually me who gave the advice – d all. :-D

Sorry, i didn't look for the names carefully :-) Anyway - if you or anyone in the forum suspects a darktable bug we would recommend -d common or only -d pipe -d opencl for a massive reduction of logsize still providing enough information to understand an issue. If providing -d all logs the chances for any of the devs reading it will be very small.

What happens here is very likely the operating system oom killer interfering, killing dt because of low memory.

[MaiaDereva]

Hello, thank you all for trying to help :)

Of course, thanks to Murphy’s Law, I wasn’t able to reproduce the crash.
But I found a way to trace oom killer activity, and here is the result:
/var/log/kern.log:2026-06-01T19:04:12.335460+02:00 maia kernel: Out of memory: Killed process 7432 (darktable) total-vm:15660716kB, anon-rss:3370968kB, file-rss:101296kB, shmem-rss:12372kB, UID:1000 pgtables:8740kB oom_score_adj:200 /var/log/kern.log:2026-06-01T19:36:50.900886+02:00 maia kernel: Out of memory: Killed process 12337 (darktable) total-vm:160

I suppose I can buy a new RAM stick? ^^

[jenshannoschwalm]

I suppose I can buy a new RAM stick?

Good idea :-)