Joplin not working on 2 machines

Operating system

Linux Container on ChromeOS

Joplin version

CURRENT LATEST VERSION (See Below) (UPDATE: Below command installed version 3.1.24)

Desktop version info

Whatever the latest current version the current install command you have listed on your website's installation page says it installs -> I.e THIS COMMAND: 'wget -O - https://raw.githubusercontent.com/laurent22/joplin/dev/Joplin_install_and_update.sh | bash'

Sync target

N/A (Couldn't set-up/open app)

Editor

N/A (Couldn't set-up/use/open app)

What issue do you have?

I was having issues with my new laptop's Linux version of Joplin and so before trying to upgrade I pulled out a slightly older laptop to experiment on and even though it seems to have installed via the script above fine, it refuses to open. The desktop icon just spins like it's doing something, forever. I have seen some others say this has happened to them upon the first time trying to open the program with a force close fixing the issue, but this isn't an option in my case, as the OS is not even recognizing it as even partially open and so the Force Close menu is not available and the only menu still available is "Open" , while it's trying to open. I already restarted my computer and tried again with no luck. Glad I didn't upgrade my other computer yet. If I cannot get it to open on this laptop and then try to upgrade on my main machine, is there any kind of rollback safety feature I can use if I end up in the same predicament on there. I'm afraid cause all my stuff is on that computer.

Thanks a lot...

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---------- UPDATE 1 ----------

I deleted the Linux Container, created a brand new one and did the same process above over, as who knows maybe my container was corrupted or got corrupted in some way. I feel it may be important to mention (something I forgot to mention but also occured during the first install try above). When using the install command/script above, it completely refused to install until I installed libfuse2, and so once the install stopped, I installed libfuse2 in the normal typical fashion without any problems. Then Started the install script via the same command above again. Same as above, it said Joplin version 3.1.24 installed. Everything looked good. I go to open Joplin, and SIMILAR to before, this time around NOTHING happens. AT ALL. The Joplin icon does NO SPINNING, NO ACTION that would appear that it is opening AT ALL. Clicking the Joplin icon does absolutely nothing. I clicked it again and again - restarted my computer and the container, and gave it plenty of time to start - if it ever was going to and - NOTHING.

==============================
THIS IS A VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM.

This means that - Joplin is NO LONGER COMPATIBLE --with either-- Linux ITSELF or ChromeOS - either of which is a COMPLETE DISASTER, that may NOT even be able to be fixed, even if I knew how to fix it!!!!!! All the documentation speaks about Ubuntu, but I'm on Debian!!!!

==========================
THIS IS A COMPLETE DISASTER

--because-- RIGHT NOW I HAVE 2 ENTIRE MACHINES WITH RELATIVELY THE SAME ARCHITECTURE THAT JOPLIN NO LONGER WORKS ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(This older machine ALSO once had Joplin working FINE on an older container at one point, and so it USED TO work ON BOTH!!!!) (Only difference is my new machine is just that, new, so it's slightly newer, and that one STOPPED WORKING AS WELL!!! -----See my other support ticket on this: Joplin Freezing my entire computer - #3 by jescity)

=====================================================================
Um...Joplin, WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO ABOUT THIS PLEASE?????????????!!!!!!!!!
IS ANYBODY LISTENING TO TO WHAT I AM SAYING???????????????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!

===========================
---------- IMPORTANT INFO ----------

Chassis: container
Virtualization: lxc
Operating System: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
Kernel: Linux 6.6.30-02726-gb84bbdf6955e
Architecture: x86-64

I will continue to post updates here as they happen for anyone following this topic.

=====================
---------- UPDATE 2 ----------

I made sure that the permissions were correct, that the AppImage was/is executable, (as the Joplin article explains as a fix for this!!) BUT then trying to run Joplin from the CLI via the AppImage, results in this ERROR:
'tmp/.mount_JoplinjZL2jd/@joplinapp-desktop: error while loading shared libraries: libnss3.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory'

Does that mean I also need to install ' libnss3.so' library? Or is this a whole other issue entirely??? PLEASE HELP!! --Thank you to all who read this and perhaps maybe even respond. Thank you in advance. Thanks All...

1 Like

Thank you for reporting this!

Rolling back to an older version: Older versions (and a pre-release version) of Joplin can be found at Releases · laurent22/joplin · GitHub . It should be possible to download the AppImages from GitHub and launch them directly.

This issue may be related to running Joplin on specific Linux distributions — Joplin 3.1.24 installs and starts on my Fedora 41 virtual machine.

I'm currently downloading a Debian 12 image to try to reproduce the issue.

Update: I can confirm that Joplin 3.1.24 doesn't start on Debian 12 (edit: GNOME, in VirtualBox. Joplin's window is blank and a "force quit" modal dialog is visible.). However, Joplin 3.2.1 (the latest pre-release, which uses a newer Electron version) does.

Are you referring specifically to Joplin on Debian 12 in a LXC container on ChromeOS?

I use the Joplin AppImage on Debian 12 (KDE) and Joplin v3.1.24 runs, as have all previous Joplin release versions from about v2.12.x.

Minimal installs of Debian, like the default in ChromeOS don't come with half the stuff needed to run GUI's.

You can see how few dependencies the minimal environments have, by e.g using WSL2, you'll be running apt install 10 times to get the GUI working. Meanwhile the Flatpak and Snap just work.

Almost any non-trivial application will probably pull these dependencies in. Something like sudo apt install gedit will basically pull in 99% of what you need.

OP, Joplin isn't broken on ChromeOS:

  1. I don't think it counts as supported in the first place to be broken now
  2. You're missing required packages, install them and it'll run. Your system is misconfigured because AppImages aren't package managers.

That's how all software works. The Flatpak and Snap packages bundle more dependencies than the AppImage, I think for ChromeOS you'd rather Flatpak out of the two. But all the dependencies should be trivially installable with just Apt, each time it complains, install the next one.

1 Like

Just for your information it seems that it is not certain that the install will fail. I created a VM on VirtualBox 7.1.4 (4 cores 4GB RAM) using a Debian 12.8 netinstall ISO. I let it install the default DE which is GNOME and did nothing else to the OS. I then installed Joplin using the install script (it installed v3.1.24). It worked without issue.

Hi @jescity, I encountered the same issues with the latest Joplin version on ChromeOS Linux container.

./Joplin.AppImage 
/tmp/.mount_JoplinomOHfz/@joplinapp-desktop: error while loading shared libraries: libnss3.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

The fix for me was to do sudo apt install libnss3.

The following errors will show up, but the Joplin application window will still appear as per normal.

Sentry: Initialized with autoUploadCrashDumps: false
[1170:1126/223110.666168:ERROR:gl_surface_presentation_helper.cc(260)] GetVSyncParametersIfAvailable() failed for 1 times!
[1170:1126/223110.676444:ERROR:gl_surface_presentation_helper.cc(260)] GetVSyncParametersIfAvailable() failed for 2 times!
[1170:1126/223110.690682:ERROR:gl_surface_presentation_helper.cc(260)] GetVSyncParametersIfAvailable() failed for 3 times!

Hope this works for you too!