Use of -g workarea causes X Error of failed request: BadValue

I second this. I have very similar specs. Running hardy 64, but I'm running up-to-date as of today (hardy's release).

Is this symptom still reproducible in 8.10 or 9.04?

Yes it is still reproducible. Percentage values and "WxH" values for -g do work.

I have the same error that you had (I copied over the error message it gave me and googled it, and here I am!). However, I don't think I was trying to do the same thing as you when I received it. I tried to run Savage2 through a terminal (since nothing happened the other way). I'm not Ubuntu literate to understand what you were trying to do, but it has something to do with the way things look, perhaps? I have a netbook, acer aspire one, with ubuntu 8.10 and netbook remix--a very small screen where not much fits(1024x600). Nothing has been updated besides that, because my wifi doesn't work with an updated kernel. Anyways, any suggestions would be awesome. Does anyone know why I'd be getting this error as well, since I'm not doing the same thing? :O I'm having a lot of trouble trying to fix the problem, as I don't know why I'm having it to begin with.

Still reproducible in 9.04 (Jaunty) with rdesktop 1.6.0-2ubuntu1.

9.04 (Jaunty) 64Bit as well

Reproducible on 9.10 (Karmic) 64bit

10.04 (Lucid) 64Bit also

10.04 32bit too. Rdesktop and krdc are crashing when using the Kaspersky Administration Kit in terminal session. No matter what the -g option parameter is.

This bug has been fixed in subversion revision 1550 and affects 64bit only, which presumably means that KeenEars is seeing a different bug.

http://rdesktop.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/rdesktop?view=revision&revision=1550

I have attached the relevant patch.

In order to fix this on a temporary basis for yourself:

apt-src install rdesktop
cp ~/Downloads/ewmhints.c.patch rdesktop-1.6.0 # or wherever you downloaded the patch to
cd rdesktop-1.6.0
patch -p2 < ewmhints.c.patch
apt-src build rdesktop

then you can install the resulting .deb file with dpkg -i.

The upstream patch seems to make sense since we have this in get_current_workarea():
    unsigned char *prop_return;
    uint32 *return_words;
    ...
    return_words = (uint32 *) prop_return;

uint32 is defined in rdesktop's types.h to be:
    typedef unsigned int uint32;

On 32 bit:
unsigned char *: 4
unsigned int: 4

But this results in mismatched sizes on 64 bit:
unsigned char *: 8
unsigned int: 4

get_current_workarea() sets prop_return via get_property_value(..., &prop_return, ...) which calls XGetWindowProperty(..., prop_return), and the man page of XGetWindowProperty shows this as an unsigned char **prop_return. Therefore, when it is set on 64 bit it can be as big as 8.

Since sizeof(long *) is 8 on 64 bit, this patch should fix the issue there. sizeof(long *) is 4 on 32 bit, so nothing should change on 32 bit (since sizeof(unsigned char *) is also 4).

Tested with xrdp server in a VM (sudo apt-get install xrdp).

Old version:
rdesktop <vm> # WORKS
rdesktop -g workarea <vm> # FAILS as per this bug

Both of these are confirmed to work now:
rdesktop <vm> # WORKS
rdesktop -g workarea <vm> # WORKS

This bug was fixed in the package rdesktop - 1.6.0-3ubuntu3

---------------
rdesktop (1.6.0-3ubuntu3) natty; urgency=low

  * debian/patches/15_lp192218.dpatch: fix -g workarea on 64 bit machines
    (LP: #192218)
 -- Jamie Strandboge <email address hidden> Wed, 09 Mar 2011 15:18:10 -0600

Where is patched package for ubuntu lucid?

Second try: Where is patched package for ubuntu lucid?
rdesktop_1.6.0-2ubuntu3.1_amd64.deb didn't fix this bug!!!

got this problem too:
$ rdesktop -m -a 8 -g 900x550 -z -P -u Administrator 127.0.0.1

stop in middle with
X Error of failed request: BadValue (integer parameter out of range for operation)
  Major opcode of failed request: 53 (X_CreatePixmap)
  Value in failed request: 0x0
  Serial number of failed request: 1780947
  Current serial number in output stream: 1781145

with Ubuntu 12.04 (liveusb) and 1.7.0-1ubuntu2