[Solved] GNOME Software Center Frozen in Fedora

Has this ever happened to you?  When you attempt to open Fedora‘s GNOME Software Center, you just see the message “Software Catalog is being Loaded” ….forever! At first glance, it looks like the Software Center is frozen, but you can actually move and close the application. Re-opening the Software Center doesn’t make any difference either since the same message appears and none of the software icons or update page ever end up loading.

How to fix Frozen/Unresponsive GNOME Software Center:

Troubleshooting the GNOME Software Center is pretty straightforward. You will first want to check the status of packagekit by running the following systemctlcommand:

[admin@linux.test ~]$ sudo systemctl status packagekit
[sudo] password for admin:

In our case, we clearly see that the PackageKit Daemon is running in a failed state and is complaining about its repo folder:
● packagekit.service - PackageKit Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/packagekit.service; static; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: failed (Result: signal) since Tue 2018-11-27 06:38:14 EST; 6h ago
Process: 14255 ExecStart=/usr/libexec/packagekitd (code=killed, signal=ABRT)
Main PID: 14255 (code=killed, signal=ABRT)

Nov 26 16:46:00 linux.test systemd[1]: Starting PackageKit Daemon...
Nov 26 16:46:00 linux.test PackageKit[14255]: daemon start
Nov 26 16:46:01 linux.test systemd[1]: Started PackageKit Daemon.
Nov 27 06:38:12 linux.test packagekitd[14255]: packagekitd: ../src/repodata.c:2858: repodata_add_dirstr: Assertion `dir' failed.
Nov 27 06:38:14 linux.test systemd[1]: packagekit.service: Main process exited, code=killed, status=6/ABRT
Nov 27 06:38:14 linux.test systemd[1]: packagekit.service: Failed with result 'signal'.

How to fix PackageKit Daemon when it has crashed or is in a failed state

Solution:

In most case, the easiest way to fix PackageKit Daemon is to simply re-install PackageKit and gnome-software

How to re-install PackageKit and gnome-software

a) Run the following commands to uninstall PackageKit (note that this will also remove gnome-software, which is a dependency of PackageKit)
[admin@linux.test cache]$ sudo yum remove PackageKit

b) Re-install the PackageKit and gnome-software packages:
[admin@linux.test cache]$ sudo yum install PackageKit gnome-software

Test to make sure that GNOME Software Center works:

Check the run status of PackageKit – if you see that it is active and running, you should be good to go.

Run the following command to check the status of PackageKit:
[admin@linux.testcache]$ sudo systemctl status packagekit
● packagekit.service - PackageKit Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/packagekit.service; static; vendor preset: disabled)
Active: active (running) since Tue 2018-11-27 12:56:31 EST; 2min 23s ago
Main PID: 21645 (packagekitd)
Tasks: 3 (limit: 4915)
Memory: 386.4M
CGroup: /system.slice/packagekit.service
└─21645 /usr/libexec/packagekitd

Nov 27 12:56:29 linux.test systemd[1]: Starting PackageKit Daemon...
Nov 27 12:56:29 linux.test PackageKit[21645]: daemon start
Nov 27 12:56:31 linux.test systemd[1]: Started PackageKit Daemon.

You will now be able to open the GNOME Software Center and be able to manage and install applications including software updates.

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