unity8-greeter aborts at start in libprotobuf

[Michael Zanetti]

Machine is a MacBook with intel graphics.
After installing unity8-greeter and rebooting all I get is a black screen and this core dump. I've heard this from other people too by now so it doesn't seem to be my machine only.

#0 0x00007f483d554428 in __GI_raise (sig=sig@entry=6) at ../sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/raise.c:54
#1 0x00007f483d55602a in __GI_abort () at abort.c:89
#2 0x00007f483d5967ea in __libc_message (do_abort=do_abort@entry=2, fmt=fmt@entry=0x7f483d6af2e0 "*** Error in `%s': %s: 0x%s ***\n") at ../sysdeps/posix/libc_fatal.c:175
#3 0x00007f483d59ee0a in malloc_printerr (ar_ptr=<optimized out>, ptr=<optimized out>, str=0x7f483d6ac0ca "free(): invalid size", action=3) at malloc.c:5004
#4 _int_free (av=<optimized out>, p=<optimized out>, have_lock=0) at malloc.c:3865
#5 0x00007f483d5a298c in __GI___libc_free (mem=<optimized out>) at malloc.c:2966
#6 0x00007f47faafb901 in google::protobuf::internal::DestroyDefaultRepeatedFields() () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libprotobuf.so.9
#7 0x00007f483320f72b in google::protobuf::ShutdownProtobufLibrary() () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libprotobuf-lite.so.9
#8 0x00007f48338df0d9 in ?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libmirprotobuf.so.3
#9 0x00007f483fc0bc17 in _dl_fini () at dl-fini.c:235
#10 0x00007f483d558ff8 in __run_exit_handlers (status=0, listp=0x7f483d8e25f8 <__exit_funcs>, run_list_atexit=run_list_atexit@entry=true) at exit.c:82
#11 0x00007f483d559045 in __GI_exit (status=<optimized out>) at exit.c:104
#12 0x00007f483d53f837 in __libc_start_main (main=0x4077e0, argc=2, argv=0x7ffd3ee9bab8, init=<optimized out>, fini=<optimized out>, rtld_fini=<optimized out>, stack_end=0x7ffd3ee9baa8)
    at ../csu/libc-start.c:325
#13 0x0000000000407bd9 in _start ()

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

This was observed for both of us with xenial+overlay.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

It's reported to work in zesty.

[Gerry Boland (gerboland)]

Please paste in the output of
dpkg -l | grep mir
and the contents of the greeter process log around the time of this crash.

[Michael Terry (mterry)]

dpkg -l | grep mir: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/23771515/
end of greeter log: http://pastebin.ubuntu.com/23771526/

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

The abort is from heap corruption bug 1535297. unity8-greeter must be throwing or crashing for a different reason prior to that.

So there are two bugs here. The secondary crash from heap corruption that you see is bug 1535297. But it sounds like unity8-greeter is crashing for some other reason prior to that which is the trigger. You'll need to remove/disable your default exception handling to find out what the Unity8-greeter crash is in the first place (and get a stack trace of it).