Ghidra just crashed => project broken after restart #8364

paulober · 2025-07-20T12:03:27Z

paulober
Jul 20, 2025

Hi,
I'm currently working on a ARM Cortex little project for a few hour while having two windows of ghidra open to compare two firmwares. I crashed while working on types. I reopened ghidra and it asked me if i want to recover unsaved changes (i backed up before doing this) and I selected yes. Now the project is in a state where most ghidra UI elements are buggy as hell: dropdowns play anymations but don't reveal anything, the listing is a a certain possition but completely blank and just none of the windows work anymore. If i open the project and select don't recover I have the same problem.

Can anyone help me with this issue to get my project back?
I did major changes in the last few hours and loosing that would be an absolute nightmare and probably the end of it.

As far as logs go here is a copy of an error:

<html>
<body>

2025-07-20 | 13:49:06 | ERROR | (DataTypeTreeCopyMoveTask) Encountered Errors Copying/Moving: Move failed.  DataType is already in this category.  Category firmware.elf/DWARF/main_header.h; Data type: OS_TMR_CALLBACK
-- | -- | -- | --



</body>
</html>�

(i'm on Ghidra 11.4 PUBLIC)

I just saw the the Symbol Table which opens an extra Window, still works and contains my work until the crash (as far as I can see in here).
And if I change the theme while the code browser is open, the whole window will just go grey with no content until I reopen it.
And the content still seems to be there so the listing also shows jumps and so with the lines but no content and also buttons like the ones for closing a panel or the menu bar buttons within a panel don't register clicks and have no animation and but the tree items within the panel animate the dropdown arrow but it reverses and no content gets revealed.

Correction the close panel buttons work after reopening the window they dissappear. But if i do File > Close ... then File > Open no content get loaded only with double click in the ghidra workspace explorer.

Also in the listing I can right click on stuff and it will show different context menus based on the position but a some point I will receive a:

Cannot invoke "ghidra.program.model.listing.CommentType.ordinal()" because "type" is null
java.lang.NullPointerException: Cannot invoke "ghidra.program.model.listing.CommentType.ordinal()" because "type" is null
	at ghidra.app.plugin.core.comments.CommentsPlugin.updatePopupPath(CommentsPlugin.java:258)
	at ghidra.app.plugin.core.comments.CommentsPlugin$1.isEnabledForContext(CommentsPlugin.java:186)
	at ghidra.app.context.ListingContextAction.isAddToPopup(ListingContextAction.java:62)
	at ghidra.app.context.ListingContextAction.isAddToPopup(ListingContextAction.java:53)
	at docking.PopupActionManager.populatePopupMenuActions(PopupActionManager.java:141)
	at docking.PopupActionManager.createPopupMenu(PopupActionManager.java:104)
	at docking.PopupActionManager.popupMenu(PopupActionManager.java:84)
	at docking.ActionToGuiMapper.showPopupMenu(ActionToGuiMapper.java:134)
	at docking.DockableComponent.showContextMenu(DockableComponent.java:168)
	at docking.DockableComponent$1.mousePressed(DockableComponent.java:69)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.AWTEventMulticaster.mousePressed(AWTEventMulticaster.java:288)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.Component.processMouseEvent(Component.java:6573)
	at java.desktop/javax.swing.JComponent.processMouseEvent(JComponent.java:3404)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.Component.processEvent(Component.java:6341)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.Container.processEvent(Container.java:2260)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.Component.dispatchEventImpl(Component.java:4958)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Container.java:2318)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Component.java:4790)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.retargetMouseEvent(Container.java:4916)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.processMouseEvent(Container.java:4556)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.LightweightDispatcher.dispatchEvent(Container.java:4500)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.Container.dispatchEventImpl(Container.java:2304)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.Window.dispatchEventImpl(Window.java:2671)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.Component.dispatchEvent(Component.java:4790)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEventImpl(EventQueue.java:725)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.EventQueue.dispatchEvent(EventQueue.java:702)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpOneEventForFilters(EventDispatchThread.java:203)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForFilter(EventDispatchThread.java:124)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEventsForHierarchy(EventDispatchThread.java:113)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:109)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.EventDispatchThread.pumpEvents(EventDispatchThread.java:101)
	at java.desktop/java.awt.EventDispatchThread.run(EventDispatchThread.java:90)
	

---------------------------------------------------
Build Date: 2025-Jun-20 1035 EDT
Ghidra Version: 11.4
Java Home: /Library/Java/JavaVirtualMachines/jdk-24.jdk/Contents/Home
JVM Version: Oracle Corporation 24.0.1
OS: Mac OS X 26.0 aarch64

The issue with the broken code explorer also affects every other firmware binary in the project also the ones I haven't touched for a few days.

paulober · 2025-07-20T14:46:32Z

paulober
Jul 20, 2025
Author

For everyone having the same issue in the future. I solved it by going into ~/Library/ghidra/.../tools and deleting all files there as well as the tools/../..Frontend...xml file and then start ghidra. Though I can't verify if ghidra broke anything in the project it self for now.

0 replies

ryanmkurtz · 2025-07-21T10:14:35Z

ryanmkurtz
Jul 21, 2025
Maintainer

This sounds like the problem in #8316 that is plaguing macOS users.

0 replies

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