VLC crashes on startup: Qt: Session management error: Could not open network socket

Question

I using Ubuntu 20.10. All of a sudden, VLC cannot be started. When trying to run it through the command line, I get:

$ vlc
VLC media player 3.0.12.1 Vetinari (revision 3.0.12.1-0-g170157402b)
[00005573fa81cb40] main libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
Qt: Session management error: Could not open network socket
Fontconfig warning: FcPattern object weight does not accept value [40 200)
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

I have the same issue (Ubuntu 20.10 installed from scratch) with VLC installed from snap. I tried to install apt package and it works well — John, Feb 01 '21 at 21:25
Experienced this issue as well on Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS. Curiously, my font manager is also crashing. — Kiteration, Feb 09 '22 at 08:38
I am also experiencing this behavior on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LTS with VLC installed from snap. — SpencerDub, Sep 15 '22 at 05:23

score 18 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 10 '23 at 19:32

18

This works for me:

sudo rm /var/cache/fontconfig/*
rm ~/.cache/fontconfig/*
fc-cache -r

answered Feb 10 '23 at 19:32

Salehi

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I was able to skip the first one, and it still fixed my problem. – Don Kirkby Apr 07 '23 at 22:24
2

This worked for me and vlc started again on 23.04 – Saurabh May 12 '23 at 16:26

score 7 · Answer 2 · edited Jun 04 '21 at 08:36

7

VLC works well with the apt package, contrary to the snap package.

edited Jun 04 '21 at 08:36

BeastOfCaerbannog

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answered Jun 04 '21 at 07:11

user1301894

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jun 10 '23 at 16:37

0

I had a similar problem with Konqueror.

I ran ps -aux | grep konqueror and killed the process then konqueror ran without issues Thank you for posting regards Michael

answered Jun 10 '23 at 16:37

Michael

1

score -1 · Answer 4 · edited Jun 04 '21 at 08:33

-1

I had the same problem with another program. For me it was due to a restriction by the router: Ubuntu was connected to a FritzBox as guest and the FritzBox seems that was blocking this connection.

As soon as I changed to a normal connection, the problem was solved!

edited Jun 04 '21 at 08:33

BeastOfCaerbannog

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answered Mar 17 '21 at 08:44

Nic Stray

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VLC crashes on startup: Qt: Session management error: Could not open network socket

4 Answers4

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