xfwm4 segmentation fault in new CVS on Debian Sarge

[Brian J. Tarricone]

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004, Jeff Hill wrote:

> Well, g'dang, I must admit I didn't think to check about those old libs as
> I had done an apt-get --purge on the deb's, but the old libs were still
> there in /usr/lib.
> 
> Sadly, removing them didn't solve the problem (I also checked for any
> other old, installed Xfce4 stuff). I redid the backtrace; it isn't exactly
> identical (ran diff on new backtrace and the one I sent: line 55 changed
> argv= to 0xbffffbc4 from 0xbffffe14). That doesn't sound like it'll be
> much help to you. I did verify that the backtrace I sent was from core
> created two hours ago, so that has to be the right one.

yeah, you're right, not terribly useful... 

> > make a new .xinitrc, and just put -
> > /usr/local/bin/xfce-mcs-manager
> > /usr/local/bin/xfwm4 --daemon
> > xterm
> > in it.  you should just get a big grey screen with an xterm (suitably
> > decorated with xfwm4 window borders)
> 
> Didn't get any decorated borders (plain black edge). Exiting xterm, X did
> quit. No crash.

it occurs to me that if you had run 4.0.x previously, the WM theme 
settings are probably broken because the directory structure for xfwm4 
themes changed a few weeks ago.  moving aside the ~/.xfce4 directory and 
trying again might do the trick, at least to verify that xfwm4 is indeed 
running.  although, you can do that just by starting another xterm and 
seeing if alt+tab works.

> > if that doesn't crash, replace the xterm line with
> > /usr/local/bin/xfce4-panel, and see how that works.  you should end up
> > with a grey screen and the panel.  the WM will be running too of course,
> > so try to launch stuff from the panel to make sure everything there is
> > working ok.
> 
> Hmm. Now I've managed to launch xterm from the panel and exit xterm
> without a crash (still no decorated borders) if I quickly click the xterm
> icon when the panel first comes up. Otherwise, putting the mouse pointer
> over any part of the panel causes Xfce4 to crash, even if I don't try to
> click on anything.
> 
> I did get the Mozilla startup screen once when I clicked on the globe icon
> quickly, but Xfce4 crashed immediately (half a second maybe) after
> displaying the Mozilla startup screen.

ouch.  this is definitely some kind of gtk (or maybe xlib) interaction 
problem.  unfortunately, that's not really something i know how to get 
into tracking down without sitting there for hours banging my head 
against a wall.

unfortunately, i'm rather stumped at this point.  aside from getting rid 
of an old ~/.xfce4 directory you may have, i can't think of anything 
else to try.

	-brian