alt+tab crashes emerald

I've been having the same problem for probably a little over a week, I just didn't want to report a dud. I'm currently running Compiz-fusion on the 64-bit Gutsy beta; it doesn't crash Compiz, only the window manager.

Same problem here with Kubuntu Gutsy. If I enable the switcher and use alt+tab emerald crashes. I was not able to crash it with any other thing, including ring switcher and shift switcher.

Confirmed, have the same problem here in Gutsy 64-bit.

Alt-tab is not guaranteed to crash Emerald all the time, but it is the source of all crashes it would seem.

I found what was causing the crash; it would seem that the xserver-xgl
package was the culprit. I removed it, and PRESTO!!!, problem solved; I now
just use the Nvidia driver which works far better than the xserver-xgl
driver anyway (Note: even though I was using the Nvidia driver before, the
xserver-xgl driver was overriding it).

On Nov 8, 2007 4:27 PM, GFree <email address hidden> wrote:

> Confirmed, have the same problem here in Gutsy 64-bit.
>
> Alt-tab is not guaranteed to crash Emerald all the time, but it is the
> source of all crashes it would seem.
>
> --
> alt+tab crashes emerald
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/151499
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

I don't use xserver-xgl and don't have it installed but I still get this bug. I'm running Xubuntu 7.10, compiz-fusion, and emerald with an Intel 945GM on the Intel driver.

I'll note that it's not consistent, but emerald does tend to crash when I use alt+tab.

I have the same problem. I m using Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon.
Laptop IBM R51 (82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device).

in xorg.conf there are
Load: "XGL"

once restart with
compiz --replace
I can't simulate this bug.

I too have the same issue, Im running AMD 64 with 2GB RAM Gutsy 64 edition.

I misspoke on my previous comment; somehow I got alt+tab confused with shift+backspace. Dropping the xserver-xgl packaged fixed the shift+backspace bug, not the alt+tab one. I'm still having issues with the 'Application Switcher' plugin.

In case it's of any use, I'm running the 64-bit version of Kubuntu Gutsy, with 2 GB of PC3200 RAM, an AMD Athlon 64 4000+ (single core) processor, and an Nvidia GeForce 7300GS graphics card with the Nvidia 100.14.23 driver (installed using Envy).

When I run 'emerald' in the console, and activate the 'Application Switcher' until Emerald crashes, the only output I receive is the following:

$ emerald
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

My /var/log/syslog shows the following about the event:

Dec 3 23:50:43 kubun2-desktop kernel: [10857.599927] emerald[17433]: segfault at 0000000000832bd0 rip 0000000000832bd0 rsp 00007fff0452e578 error 15

I have attached my xorg.conf for any interested.

I just learned that my '/var/crash/' directory is used for storing application crash information, and decided to see what it contained. Lo-and-behold, there is an entry for Emerald! I'm not sure it pertains to this situation, because it's timestamped '11/30/2007', and previous to my last post, I hadn't used the 'Application Switcher' plugin for some time, but I've attached the file just in case it helps any.

**SOLUTION** **SOLUTION** **SOLUTION**

I have found the solution! (at least for me)...

Load up the CompizConfig Settings Manager, and under the section of options marked "Utility", DISABLE "Regex Matching". I have gotten to a stage where I could reproduce the crashing of emerald at will (by alt-tabbing between two open gnome terminals), but when I disabled regex matching, all the problems went away and I couldn't get it to crash anylonger.

I'm not sure how important regex matching is. I hear it's used for a few other plugins, but I haven't seen anything major as a result of disabling it. So there you go. :)

regex matching is used for just about every compiz plugin. it's the only way to specify particular animations for particular windows, and for specifying which applications you'd like to appear on the widget layer.
scale windows title filter uses it as well.

but at least this is a step in finding the problem.

Oh, forgot to mention that I'm a victim as well. I use the xorg radeon drivers, so it's not something to do with it being proprietary drivers.
I crash on the second time after alt+tabbing, but after restarting emerald (and not compiz) it doesn't seem to happen anymore. Can't be 100% sure, though.

I take that back, it just happened.

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. However, your crash report is either missing or challenging to deal with as a ".crash" file. Please follow these instuctions to have apport report a new bug about your crash that can be dealt with by the automatic retracer.

If you are using Ubuntu with the Gnome desktop environment - launch nautilus and navigate to your /var/crash directory and double click on the crash report you wish to submit.
If you are using Kubuntu or Xubuntu you can file the crash using "/usr/share/apport/apport-qt --crash-file=/var/crash/_my_crash_report.crash" in a terminal - where _my_crash_report.crash is the crash you would like to report.

I'm closing this bug report since the process outlined above will automatically open a new bug report which can then dealt with more efficiently. Note that if the new bug-report will be called 'emerald crashed with SIGSEGV in gdk_gc_new_with_values()' it's very likely to be a duplicate of bug 139877.

Thanks in advance for your cooperation and understanding.

I experienced the same thing after enabling the "Reflection" effect in CompizConfig Settings Manager. I'm not running Emerald or any themes at all, just Compiz. After enabling "Reflection" and choosing a custom image, ALT-TAB would crash my X session entirely, back to the login screen. Disabling the Reflection effect resolved the issue.