Xorg crashes with SEGV failing to access /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d

[halfdog]

Trying to get "Xorg -configure" working again to create a monolithic configuration file for automated distribution (the "Xorg: No devices to configure. Configuration failed." problem with -configure mentioned in forums), I moved away /usr/share/X11/xorg.conf.d to get rid of any interferences from that direction. This resulted in a crash starting Xorg on Ubuntu Xenial:

(EE) Backtrace:
(EE) 0: /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg (xorg_backtrace+0x52) [0x8024ff92]
(EE) 1: /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg (0x800ae000+0x1a63f2) [0x802543f2]
(EE) 2: (vdso) (__kernel_rt_sigreturn+0x0) [0xb7712c20]
(EE) 3: /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg (xf86PlatformMatchDriver+0xb5) [0x80149565]
(EE) 4: /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg (0x800ae000+0x9eb08) [0x8014cb08]
(EE) 5: /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg (0x800ae000+0x9ecd1) [0x8014ccd1]
(EE) 6: /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg (InitOutput+0x79a) [0x8012fa0a]
(EE) 7: /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg (0x800ae000+0x3ed81) [0x800ecd81]
(EE) 8: /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg (0x800ae000+0x28a3a) [0x800d6a3a]
(EE) 9: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xf7) [0xb71f9637]
(EE) 10: /usr/lib/xorg/Xorg (0x800ae000+0x28a78) [0x800d6a78]
(EE)
(EE) Segmentation fault at address 0x28

# lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS
Release: 16.04

# apt-cache policy xserver-xorg-core
xserver-xorg-core:
  Installed: 2:1.18.4-0ubuntu0.1
  Candidate: 2:1.18.4-0ubuntu0.1
  Version table:
 *** 2:1.18.4-0ubuntu0.1 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial-updates/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2:1.18.3-1ubuntu2 500
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu xenial/main i386 Packages

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It sounds like some part of the system has crashed. To help us find the cause of the crash please follow these steps:

1. Look in /var/crash for crash files and if found run:
    ubuntu-bug YOURFILE.crash
Then tell us the ID of the newly-created bug.

2. If step 1 failed then look at https://errors.ubuntu.com/user/ID where ID is the content of file /var/lib/whoopsie/whoopsie-id on the machine. Do you find any links to recent problems on that page? If so then please send the links to us.

3. If step 2 also failed then apply the workaround from bug 994921, reboot, reproduce the crash, and retry step 1.

Please take care to avoid attaching .crash files to bugs as we are unable to process them as file attachments. It would also be a security risk for yourself.

[halfdog (halfdog)]

I do not have any running Ubuntu machines any more, but on Debian Bullseye with

ii xserver-xorg-core 2:1.20.10-3 amd64 Xorg X server - core server

the crash does not happen any more, neither running just X or Xorg -configure.

So unless this was a bug specific to Ubuntu, I would deem it fixed upstream.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for xorg-server (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]