Arduino IDE fails to open after reboot

I've installed version 1.8.13 under Linux Mint 20. I the first session everything seems to work OK. However, after rebooting the PC the IDE fails to open - the small splash window appears briefly but then just disappears. This has happened twice now so the behaviour appears consistent.

The uninstall.sh script doesn't appear to do anything but if I manually delete the .arduino15 directory from my home directory and re-run the install.sh script then the IDE will run for that session.

Any assistance with diagnosing the problem would be welcome as I'm a newbie to both Arduino and Linux.

Please do this:

  • Start a terminal in the Arduino IDE installation folder
  • Type
./arduino
  • Press Enter.
  • Wait for the Arduino IDE to finish starting, or failing to start.
  • Switch back to the terminal window if the Arduino IDE window took the focus.
  • Click and drag the mouse to select all the output in the terminal window.
  • Press Ctrl + c. This will copy the selected text to the clipboard.
  • In this Arduino forum thread, click on the reply field.
  • Click the </> button on the forum toolbar. This will add the forum's code tags markup to your reply, making it easier for us to read.
  • Press Ctrl + V. This will paste the output between the code tags.
  • Move the cursor outside of the code tags before you add any additional text to your reply.
  • Click the "Post" button.

Hopefully that will give us some information we can use to help you with the problem.

Picked up JAVA_TOOL_OPTIONS: 
Set log4j store directory /home/phil/.arduino15
Incorrect IDE installation folder: Your copy of the IDE is installed in a subfolder of your sketchbook.
Please move the IDE to another folder.

That looks fairly straightforward for me to solve :slight_smile: I shall reorganize my directories and re-install.

Yeah, the default sketchbook directory is ~/Arduino. So you get this error if you install the Arduino IDE there.

You can customize the sketchbook directory, but the easiest solution is to just move the Arduino IDE installation to any other location.

If you do prefer to keep your installation under ~/Arduino, I can provide instructions for setting another sketchbook location.


In case you're interested in reading some unnecessary details, there is some discussion about the issue and possible future improvements on the user experience here: