Extension host crashes repeatedly with SIGABRT on Linux (Cursor 3.27.12, system Electron 42.9.3)

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1

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Описание:
The extension host terminates unexpectedly every 10–20 seconds with “Extension host terminated unexpectedly 3 times within the last 5 minutes”. After each crash it restarts automatically and crashes again. The same happens in VS Code from the AUR package.

Environment:

Cursor 3.27.12, AUR package cursor-bin (uses system electron42 42.9.3-1)
Manjaro Linux, kernel 7.3.0-rc1-2, GNOME on Wayland
Started on 2026-10-23, right after updating cursor-bin and electron42. Before that it worked fine.
What I see:

coredumpctl shows 72 SIGABRT crashes of /usr/lib/electron42/electron today.
renderer.log: “Extension host (LocalProcess pid: …) terminated unexpectedly”. Only built-in extensions were running: anysphere.cursor-agent-exec, cursor-agent-host, cursor-agent-worker, cursor-always-local, cursor-browser-automation, cursor-checkout, cursor-computer-use, cursor-deeplink, cursor-explorer, cursor-mcp, cursor-resolver-helper, cursor-retrieval, cursor-socket, vscode.git, vscode.git-base, vscode.github-authentication. No third-party extensions.
No OOM, no GPU errors in the journal, and the cause is not visible in the logs.
Side effect: systemd-coredump wrote full dumps to the root partition (several GB), which loaded the SSD to 100% until I disabled core dump storage.
Expected: the extension host stays running.

Question: is Electron 42 supported by Cursor 3.27.x? Which Electron version is the official build based on?

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Install Cursor from AUR package cursor-bin (uses system electron42 42.9.3-1).
  2. On Manjaro Linux (kernel 7.3.0-rc1-2, GNOME Wayland), launch Cursor after updating cursor-bin and electron42.
  3. Open any workspace (no third-party extensions required; only built-in Cursor extensions).
  4. Wait 10–20 seconds without further interaction.
  5. Observe notification: “Extension host terminated unexpectedly 3 times within the last 5 minutes”.
  6. Extension host auto-restarts and crashes again in a loop.
  7. Same behavior occurs with VS Code from AUR on the same system.
  8. Check: coredumpctl list | grep electron → many SIGABRT dumps for /usr/lib/electron42/electron.

Operating System

Linux

Version Information

Cursor 3.27.12, AUR package cursor-bin (uses system electron42 42.9.3-1)
Manjaro Linux, kernel 7.3.0-rc1-2, GNOME on Wayland
Started on 2026-10-23, right after updating cursor-bin and electron42. Before that it worked fine.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

No - Cursor works, but with this issue

6

Hey @andxbes,

The official Cursor 3.27 Linux builds ship with their own Electron (42.11.16), and Cursor isn’t built or tested to run on a system Electron package. The cursor-bin AUR package is community-maintained and runs Cursor on your distro’s electron42 instead, so when that package changes, the extension host can start crashing like this. VS Code crashing the same way on your machine points to the same shared electron42 package. Other Arch-based systems have been seeing this since October 22 on many different kernel versions, so the 7.3 RC kernel doesn’t look like the cause.

To get back to a stable setup, either of these should work:

  1. Use the official AppImage from Cursor · Download, which bundles the matching Electron. On Manjaro, if it doesn’t start, install fuse2 first: sudo pacman -S fuse2.
  2. Or roll electron42 back to the version you had before the update, from your pacman cache: sudo pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/electron42-<previous-version>-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst, then add IgnorePkg = electron42 to /etc/pacman.conf until a fixed package lands.

It’s also worth reporting this to the cursor-bin maintainer and to Manjaro’s electron42 packagers, since it affects VS Code too. For the disk space, the existing dumps are in /var/lib/systemd/coredump and are safe to delete.

There’s an earlier thread with the same root cause (cursor-bin on a mismatched system Electron) here: Arch/CachyOS: opening modal/overlay windows crashes Cursor when cursor-bin uses generic system Electron; fixed by pinning wrapper to electron39

8 
yay -Rns cursor-bin
yay -S cursor-early-access-bin

Even though it says early access but based on the last 30 days, official and early access release numbers are identical. The early access aur package doesn’t strip the electron binary and hence doesn’t crash

10

Where does the bug appear (feature/product)?

Cursor IDE

Describe the Bug

Since Oct 25, 2026 my extension host keeps crashing, and I get “Extension host terminated unexpectedly 3 times within the last 5 minutes”. Every time, the live preview from my cloud agent (port forwarded from the agent VM) goes down too. Restart Extension Host fixes it briefly, then it comes back. Extension Bisect does nothing, because no third-party extensions are involved.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Open Cursor on Linux (Hyprland / Wayland) with a cloud agent running and its live preview open.
  2. Keep working normally for a few minutes, staying in Cursor.
  3. The extension host crashes three times in about a minute and the preview disconnects.

Expected Behavior

The extension host stays up and the cloud agent preview stays connected.

Screenshots / Screen Recordings

exthost-error.png
exthost-error.png531×138 13 KB

Operating System

Linux

Version Information

Cursor 3.27.12 (commit df132ffba90dfc15a12e6b8f020ba4e5d026c4be), stable. This is the latest Linux release right now.
OS: Linux x64, Hyprland (Wayland)

Additional Information

What the logs show

  • main.log: Extension host with pid ... exited with code: 134 / crashed with code 134 and reason 'crashed', about every 20 seconds, three times in a row, then an automatic restart.
  • Only built-in extensions were running at each crash: anysphere.cursor-agent-exec, cursor-agent-host, cursor-agent-worker, cursor-always-local, cursor.cursor-browser-automation, cursor-checkout, cursor.cursor-computer-use, cursor-deeplink, cursor-explorer, cursor-mcp, cursor-resolver-helper, cursor-retrieval, cursor-socket, vscode.git, vscode.git-base, vscode.github-authentication.
  • renderer.log, right before the crashes: Timed out resolving the agent workspace after 30000ms: WorkspaceResolutionTimeoutError
  • The second window logs: Error: Socket provider became unavailable while the connection was active, then failed reconnects (socketFactory.connect() failed or timed out. Error: Canceled).
  • Plenty of free memory (30 GB RAM, about 19 GB available), so it isn’t running out of RAM. Logs from earlier in the week show clean exits, so this looks new.

Happy to share the full log folder if it helps.

Does this stop you from using Cursor

Yes - Cursor is unusable

14

Additional symptom: requests to the cloud agent frequently fail with “Error: Canceled”, Request ID ff715d28-0089-4e87-88c7-0d400393d998, and at the same time I get “3 notes not sent. The notes stay in the queue.” when using Annotate. Seems to line up with the same connection drops. Screenshot attached.

canceled-request
canceled-request3477×361 37.9 KB

17

Hey @tigr,

The “Canceled” errors and the stuck Annotate notes come from the same extension host crash: anything being sent to the cloud agent at the moment it crashes gets canceled. The messages that got through were processed normally.

The crash loop matches what other Arch-based setups have been hitting since October 22. It lines up with the community cursor-bin AUR package, which runs Cursor on your distro’s system electron42, and electron42 was updated right before the crashes started. If that’s how you installed it, any of these should help:

  1. Switch to the official AppImage from Cursor · Download.
  2. Swap to cursor-early-access-bin, which another user reported keeps the bundled Electron and stops the crashes.
  3. Roll electron42 back from the pacman cache and hold it with IgnorePkg = electron42 in /etc/pacman.conf.

In the meantime, once the extension host is back up, Try again on the error resends the message, and your notes stay in the queue so you can send them again.

If you’re on the official AppImage, .deb or tarball instead, let me know which one, since that would point to something else.

18

Thanks Colin, that’s really helpful. Yes, I’m on the cursor-bin AUR package. I’ll switch to the official AppImage and see how it goes.