metacity crashed with SIGSEGV in __libc_start_main()

This crash has the same stack trace characteristics as bug #258074. However, the latter was already fixed in an earlier package version than the one in this report. This might be a regression or because the problem is in a dependent package.

I don't use metacity, but compiz...

®om: sorry, I'm missing the relevance of your comment.

Hi there Thomas Thurman,

I fear that it is actually very relevant. It all has to do with PAM and authentication problems. See bug Bug #284653.

Cheers,

Thomas

I'm still bewildered. Someone reports a crash in Metacity. Someone else says he doesn't use Metacity (so what?). And now you point to a crash in consolekit. I can only see the relevance of the first one. Sorry if I'm being stupid.

Hi there,

I think the problem is caused by conflicting configuration of PAM and Unix Consolekit along with faulty setting of ~/.dmrc and ~/.dbus.

This causes crashes due to permission errors in /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket and crashes a variety of applications including (not exhaustive):

hald-volume-manager
canberra-play-gtk
jockey-gtk
console-kit-daemon
pulseaudio
compiz
compiz.real
x-session-manager
...

I will document this further shortly.

Cheers,

Thomas

----- Original Message ----
From: Thomas Thurman <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Saturday, October 18, 2008 4:44:45 PM
Subject: [Bug 266929] Re: metacity crashed with SIGSEGV in __libc_start_main()

I'm still bewildered. Someone reports a crash in Metacity. Someone
else says he doesn't use Metacity (so what?). And now you point to a
crash in consolekit. I can only see the relevance of the first one.
Sorry if I'm being stupid.

--
metacity crashed with SIGSEGV in __libc_start_main()
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/266929
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Then this can't be a Metacity problem. Metacity doesn't use ConsoleKit or DBus.

Hi Thomas,

That is exactly the problem in fact. If you run dpkg-reconfigure debconf -p low and select text mode and priority low, followed by dpkg-reconfigure -ap low you will get configuration questions of the type: use: 1. unix authentication 2. consolekit 3. likewise 4. ... The choices should be seperated by a space: 1 2 3 If you select everything and then change your /home folder: sudo chmod -cR 777 /home* ; sudo -cR chown -cR 1000 /home/* you will get faulty ~/.dmrc and ~/.dbus settings. Many users will do that because they cannot remove installation files from their home folder through nautilus gui (to save space for instance). If you start: $ sudo nautilus you can change the permissions, but only one by one. I suspect that is the problem. Since your different authentication methods conflict, you experience a wide variety of crashes. To get a backtrace you should start valgrind 'previously crashed process' and then gdb 2>&1 | gdb-<previously_crashed_process>
 and use gdb attach pid (check with pidof or ps -A). The problem is that most crashes are fatal, requiring reboot and which application will crash is unpredictable. I have not been able to backtrace this properly, I am currently searching the proper debug symbols: 'apt-cache search <packagename> | grep "dbg"'. Could you try this out on VirtualBox or VMWare or a dedicated testing machine, or better yet a server with many partitions? It could work, I promise.

----- Original Message ----
From: Thomas Thurman <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Saturday, October 18, 2008 5:30:16 PM
Subject: [Bug 266929] Re: metacity crashed with SIGSEGV in __libc_start_main()

Then this can't be a Metacity problem. Metacity doesn't use ConsoleKit
or DBus.

--
metacity crashed with SIGSEGV in __libc_start_main()
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/266929
You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
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Please, please, please, tell me what this has to do with Metacity. I didn't see a mention of Metacity anywhere in your reply.

Hi Thomas,

Metacity is an X Window manager. All applications such as xserver-xorg Xorg gnome-session metacity compiz and such require authorization from PAM or consolekit. In fact I got this very crash twice, once with compiz loop in event ... and another time with only metacity. The crash occured for instance by just '$ x-session-manager' after I head already called '$ sudo <valgrind stuff, see wiki> compiz.

----- Original Message ----
From: Thomas Thurman <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Saturday, October 18, 2008 6:29:48 PM
Subject: [Bug 266929] Re: metacity crashed with SIGSEGV in __libc_start_main()

Please, please, please, tell me what this has to do with Metacity. I
didn't see a mention of Metacity anywhere in your reply.

--
metacity crashed with SIGSEGV in __libc_start_main()
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/266929
You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
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Metacity never does any authentication with anyone, never has, never will. I'm closing this bug; I think you may wish to raise another bug against the session manager, rather than a window manager.

(Okay, I won't close it, because the apport trace appears to contain a genuine Metacity crash. The comments here don't make much sense to me, though.)

I'm also experiencing the same problem with metacity in Intrepid release candidate.

Any suggestion to fix this problem?

X and gnome are running but I have no window manager. Here is the message in dmesg:

[ 622.813587] metacity[7580]: segfault at 0 ip 080abab3 sp bf9c8ff0 error 4 in metacity[8048000+7a000]

Rename .gnome and .gnome2 folders does not solve anything.

I installed debugging symbols and ran metacity in gdb. Here is the backtrace (message about ui.c looks strange, did I do something wrong?):

(gdb) run
Starting program: /usr/bin/metacity
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
[New Thread 0xb73509d0 (LWP 12524)]

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
[Switching to Thread 0xb73509d0 (LWP 12524)]
meta_ui_parse_modifier (accel=0x0, mask=0xbfaf5400) at ui/ui.c:839
839 ui/ui.c: No such file or directory.
 in ui/ui.c
(gdb) bt full
#0 meta_ui_parse_modifier (accel=0x0, mask=0xbfaf5400) at ui/ui.c:839
 gdk_mask = 0
 gdk_sym = 0
#1 0x080746b1 in mouse_button_mods_handler (pref=META_PREF_MOUSE_BUTTON_MODS,
    string_value=0x0, inform_listeners=0xbfaf5444) at core/prefs.c:1381
 mods = <value optimized out>
#2 0x0807592c in meta_prefs_init () at core/prefs.c:550
 err = (GError *) 0x0
 gconf_dir_cursor = <value optimized out>
#3 0x0807226c in main (argc=1, argv=0xbfaf5884) at core/main.c:395
 act = {__sigaction_handler = {sa_handler = 0x1, sa_sigaction = 0x1},
  sa_mask = {__val = {0 <repeats 32 times>}}, sa_flags = 0,
  sa_restorer = 0xbfaf56c4}
 empty_mask = {__val = {0 <repeats 32 times>}}
 log_domains = {0x0, 0x80b48ec "metacity", 0x80b3eab "Gtk",
  0x80b3eaf "Gdk", 0x80b3eb3 "GLib", 0x80b3eb8 "Pango",
  0x80b3ebe "GLib-GObject", 0x80b3ecb "GThread"}

Here is valgind output, I think it should be more useful.

I attached apport report (with debug symbols) there: #258074

Is this actually a dupe of #258074?

This bug was fixed in the package metacity - 1:2.25.8-0ubuntu1

---------------
metacity (1:2.25.8-0ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low

  * New upstream release
    - Ignore mouse button modifier if it's missing (Thomas)
      (LP: #258054, LP: #266929)
    - Merge screen and window keybindings files; fix minor alt-tab bug
      in the process (Thomas) (LP: #217989)
  * debian/control.in:
    - Build-dep and Depend on zenity for dialogs
  * debian/rules:
    - Bump shlibs to 2.25.8

 -- Pedro Fragoso <email address hidden> Tue, 25 Nov 2008 12:17:25 +0000

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