[SOLVED] LXDE mess: Segfaults

[Neal ManBear]

Uninstall Guayadeque and reboot. How is it now?

[qbrick]

Ok, I'm back at my desk. On my netbook I have the latest 2.6.33 bfs kernel running. I have reinstalled xscreensaver and as root top shows the xscreensaver process owned by user on top of the list running at 100%. The LX task manager shows an xscreensaver process with a different pid constantly at 50% cpu-load.
Now I log in as root to do the tasks. Top shows a load of 1 to 2 % which is an absolutely normal idle load on a system with a N270 Atom processor. The same with LX task manager. X is on top of the process table.
A look on the recent updates. The installation comes from my desktop LXDE PCLinuxOS 2010. The updates start on 18th October (samba-winbind.)
On the same day the following packages came in: dkms-vboxadditions, hdparm, lxde-common, lxdecc, virtualbox-guest-additions, x11-driver-input-vboxmouse, x11-driver-video-vboxvideo.
20. Oct:gnupg, libv4l, libv4l0, parcellite
21. Oct: pmount
On the same day I installed gmixer and the dependency packages gstreamer0.10-python and python-xlib. I uninstalled all three later, after I pushed up the master volume.
22. Oct: firefox, firefox-de, flash-player-plugin, glibc, glibc-devel, glibci18ndata, libpurple0,libsqlite3_0, thunderbird, thunderbird-de, pidgin, xulrunner
23. Oct: I installed the 2.6.33 bfs kernel just to see, if the performance made a difference. It did, so I stayed with it.
Reinstallation of the four xscreensaver-packages (-, -base, -common, -gl). That was because of the screensaver problem, which occur with the 2.6.32 kernel too, now. Uninstalling xscreensaver and -base. Installing those two again.
This is my update history on this very fresh system.

Going to reboot now after uninstalling the (excellent) music player Guayadeque and adding 'irqpoll' to the kernel line.
The xscreensaver problem still persists, lxterminal starts with a segfault. Desmg doesn't say anything, messages shows an entry like I quoted above:

Oct 24 00:55:13 localhost klogd: lxterminal[17243]: segfault at bf09effc ip b6c43239 sp bf09eff4 error 6 in libc-2.10.1.so[b6bdd000+15a000]

And I have several messages like the Lxterminal crash message concerning xscreensaver: error 6 in libc-2.10.1.so.
Now I reinstall glibc- glibc-devel and glibc-i18ndata on my netbook. I did that on my desktop already.
After reboot, nothing has changed.

[melodie]

Hi,

My kernel is:
2.6.33.7-pclos5.bfs

I'll soon update it to
2.6.33.7-pclos6.bfs

I think you might want to either reinstall for the newest Lxde or avoid certain things. screensavers are not very good for screens ( source a very good friend who deals with theses and with electronics) you don't really need screensavers.

What machine is that exactly ? Aren't Atom processors for notebooks ?

Going to reboot now after uninstalling the (excellent) music player Guayadeque and adding 'irqpoll' to the kernel line.
The xscreensaver problem still persists, lxterminal starts with a segfault. Desmg doesn't say anything, messages shows an entry like I quoted above:

What about giving Sakura a try ?

[qbrick]

I think you might want to either reinstall for the newest Lxde or avoid certain things. screensavers are not very good for screens ( source a very good friend who deals with theses and with electronics) you don't really need screensavers.

What machine is that exactly ? Aren't Atom processors for notebooks ?

Atoms are primarily used in netbooks. They're sufficient for internet and office tasks.
The thing with the screensaver is, you can lock your screen with a single click, which is important for devices you carry around and leave them lying on a table to get a coffee. Anyway, there seems to be much more going on than just the screensaver issue, since text input in dialogue boxes is broken, too. Impossible to enter an url in Chromium's adress bar (Firefox does not have this problem), enter a file for a file you want to save, enter the root password in gksu. On the first look, you'd suspect the underlying message bus to be flawed on my system, s.th. with dbus or even X11. But then there is the segfault error message in the syslog file mentioning libc. I don't know. Probably, I have to make a complete reinstall on both machines with the new 2010.10 revision. To have a 32-bit system on both machines is definately a big plus here, since I can take over the updates from machine #1 to install them on the netbook.

What about giving Sakura a try ?

Oh, I'll have a look at it later today. 

[melodie]

Hi,

Apart from this notebook do you meet with theses issues on other machines ? If yes, what brand and model ?

Here are the specs of the proc N270:
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=36331

It has hyperthreading capabilities.

Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology
   Yes

What **exact** kernel version did you install ? I would like you to give real answers : type "uname -a" in a console and please copy back the output in you next message.

Is hyperthreading enabled in the bios of that machine ?

Have you smp enabled in the Grub advanced options ?

Courage ! This can be solved !

[melodie]

Anyway, there seems to be much more going on than just the screensaver issue, since text input in dialogue boxes is broken, too.

Hi,

You have not used Bleachbit without ticking the english language to be kept -and eventually a second one if you don't use english natively-  in the preferences section, have you ?

[Neal ManBear]

To see if the problem is user settings related, create a new user account, log out and log in as the new user. Do the issues show up?

[qbrick]

Hyperthtreading is enabled.
Kernel is Linux localhost 2.6.33.7-pclos6.bfs #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu Oct 21 22:42:28 CDT 2010 i686 Intel(R) Atom(TM) CPU N270 @ 1.60 GHz GNU/Linux
Installation of this kernel is not related to the emerging problems by time.

I have gone through a bleachbit task on my desktop system where I made the iso from. English and German are ticked.

Now for a new user account. I cannot create a test user with the control-center, since I have to enter text in the text field, which leads to segfaulting of the user administration module. Fortunately, xterm is still working.

Bloody! Test user is able to open lxterminal and doesn't suffer from xscreensaver 'going postal'.

Ok, deleted everything in my $HOME except the user data and after logging in everything seems to work as it should. I'm cautious to flag this thread as SOLVED; first have to be sure about the root account getting fixed as easy as my user account. Still, I wonder what the problem was.
This radical approach is giving me a warm and happy feeling inside - but leaves me behind feeling clueless.  

BTW I guess the Guayadeque problem on both machines (netbook and Athlon X2 250 desktop box) still exists, because I've already terminated every single file related to that great & useful program.

[Neal ManBear]

My guess is that something in your user configurations was changed during the install of Guayadeque. This may have been further exacerbated during the update that followed. But this is only a guess.

[melodie]

Hi,

If you want to do further test I have an idea you could try out : install a small PCLinuxOS to Virtualbox, install Gayadeque, and look if something is damaged once done ?

In small versions there are less files, and the install is faster too.

[qbrick]

Melodie, you're busy recruiting ppl for your Openbox flavour, aren't you? 
Have been using Crunchbang for quite a while - great distro. However, I'm still amazed by the rolling releases of PCLOS. Especially with the Openbox- or LXDE set much less packages have to be updated than with KDE or Gnome.

I won't give up on Guayadeque easily. It's worth to invest some time to get it working. In case I come to a solution, I will append i to the thread, of course.
Not many people seem to use the program. It's perfect for Openbox/LXDE because of its speed when dealing with large music libraries.

[melodie]

Melodie, you're busy recruiting ppl for your Openbox flavour, aren't you? 

Yes sir !
However making them takes me more time.

Have been using Crunchbang for quite a while - great distro. However, I'm still amazed by the rolling releases of PCLOS. Especially with the Openbox- or LXDE set much less packages have to be updated than with KDE or Gnome.

Yes, rolling is much more interesting than new releases that break the system if you install them on top of the preceeding.

I won't give up on Guayadeque easily. It's worth to invest some time to get it working. In case I come to a solution, I will append i to the thread, of course.

Software section might be more relevant though...

Not many people seem to use the program. It's perfect for Openbox/LXDE because of its speed when dealing with large music libraries.

Therefore I might give it a try. It's possible I will have soon an Openbox version installed that I will be about to format, so I could install it there before, and get it to run to see if anything wrong happens.

It looks like *you* recruited someone