Compiz crashes the system

[Pierre-Antoine Champin]

Binary package hint: compiz

I use gutsy, the nvidia-glx-new driver, and the linux-rt kernel, on a Dell Latitude D820 laptop.

compiz : 1:0.6.0+git20071008-0ubuntu1.1
nvidia-glx-new : 100.14.19+2.6.22.4-14.10
linux-rt : 2.6.22.14.21

I have experienced recently a lot of system crashes (screens blinks, turns to white/green, then laptop reboots) when using compiz. I made some tests and I think I localized the bug :

First I tested compiz with the only the Window Decoration module activated.
When I open a lot of windows (~55 gnome-terminal, but it requires less windows if they are bigger), garbage appears on the screen (in new windows, or in windows I resize to bigger sizes, sometimes on the Desktop too). See Capture.png attached. If I close enough windows, the problem disappears. It reappears everytime I reach the critical number of windows (or, as it seems, total surface of opened windows).

Now, lets activate other modules in compiz.
The problem remains, but some modules (see below) appear to crash the system shortly after the garbage problem appears. I didn't test all modules (it takes quite some time to reboot after each crash ;) but :

the following modules do *not* seem to crash the system : Enhanced Zoom Desktop, Desktop Cube, Desktop Wall, Expo, Rotate Cube, Fading Windows, Minimize Effect, Window Decoration, Wobbly Windows, Window Previews, Jpeg, Png, Svg, Text, Crash handler, Dbus, Regex Matching, Resize Info, Scale Addons, Scale Window Title Filter, Video Playback, Workarounds, Move Window, Place Window, , Ring Switcher, Scale, Shift Switcher, Resize Window

the module Animations does *not* seem to crash either, but I didn't test all the available effects.

the following modules *do* crash the system : Application Switcher, Clone Output

when I disable the Mipmap option in the Application Switcher module, it seems that it doesn't crash the system anymore.

This is it. Hope this helps.