(x86-64) Alexandria crashes when mouse over books

[Sense Egbert Hofstede]

Binary package hint: alexandria

When I start Alexandria it crashes almost immediately. When I start it in the terminal I get this output:
qense@nott:~$ LANGUAGE=C alexandria
/home/qense/.themes/MurrinaNeo - greenmod/gtk-2.0/gtkrc:62: Murrine configuration option "squaredstyle" is not supported and will be ignored.
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/iconview_tooltips.rb:102: [BUG] Segmentation fault
ruby 1.8.6 (2007-09-24) [x86_64-linux]

Afgebroken (core dumped)

I'm using the latest version of Alexandria on hardy heron:
qense@nott:~$ LANGUAGE=C apt-cache policy alexandria
alexandria:
  Installed: 0.6.3-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 0.6.3-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 0.6.3-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://nl.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

According to the changelog this bug should be fixed, but it isn't. If you need any other information, please ask me.

[Lennart Karssen (l.c.karssen)]

Hoi Sense,

Thanks for your bug report. We will look into it as soon as possible!
From your report I gather that you're running x86-64, is that correct?

[Greg Grossmeier (greg.grossmeier)]

I can confirm this on 64bit Hardy.

Weird thing is it doesn't crash until the mouse moves over the book display area (mine is empty since I just reinstalled). I can use keyboard shortcuts to navigate the menus and use the mouse to navigate the menus (including adding a new book) as long as I don't move the mouse into that area.

greg@foucault:~$alexandria
/usr/lib/ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/iconview_tooltips.rb:102:in `get_path': method `respond_to?' called on terminated object (0x40c66238)
  from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/iconview_tooltips.rb:102:in `on_motion'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/iconview_tooltips.rb:51:in `set_view'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui.rb:51:in `call'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui.rb:51:in `main'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui.rb:51:in `start_gtk'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui.rb:57:in `main'
  from /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/alexandria.rb:40:in `main'
  from /usr/bin/alexandria:27

It does not create a .crash file in /var/crash

[Greg Grossmeier (greg.grossmeier)]

Judging from our two tracebacks, it looks like something in iconview_tooltips.rb is the culprit.

[Joseph Method (tristil)]

Can you try most recent package (ubuntu2) from Hardy Universe repository (might have to remove PPA repository to get it)? This was supposed to fix a similar bug.

[Lennart Karssen (l.c.karssen)]

Joseph,

I don't know about Greg, but Sense already uses -ubuntu2 as he points out in his opening post. It's strange indeed, since this was supposed to be fixed as you said...

[Greg Grossmeier (greg.grossmeier)]

Yes, sorry I didn't mention it, I am using -ubuntu2

alexandria:
  Installed: 0.6.3-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 0.6.3-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 0.6.3-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com hardy/universe Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Joseph Method (tristil)]

Pretty sure this is an issue with ruby-gnome2 and 64bit (the terminated object (0x40c66238) part makes it look like it's happening in the C part of the bindings), but I'll try to investigate further.

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

I'm indeed using ubuntu2 already, like you can see in my bug report. ;)
I can also confirm that it only happens when moving your mouse over a book, so the title is wrong.

[Lennart Karssen (l.c.karssen)]

John Keeping sent the following mail to the alexandria mailing list where this (or a similarly behaving) bug was being discussed:

> This looks like a bug I found on Gentoo and submitted a patch for, which
> is now in ruby-gnome2 svn. The relevant bugs are here:
> https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=215634
> http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=1930481&group_id=53614&atid=470969
>
> Hopefully this will save you some time tracking it down.

[Joseph Method (tristil)]

You could try building and installing ruby-gnome2 from svn and seeing if the behavior remains.

[Mike Basinger (mike.basinger)]

Work around: Switching to list view at least allows you to use the program.

[Greg Grossmeier (greg.grossmeier)]

The bug in the upstream bug tracker: http://rubyforge.org/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=19042&group_id=205&atid=863

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

Sorry for the mail noise. It seems like LP doesn't support rubyforge.

[gzip (ceriumz)]

I'm experiencing this bug as well on AMD 64. It also crashed a few times while importing books from a scanner.

[gzip (ceriumz)]

Ok, I manually applied the diff in the rubyforge bug above and it fixed the issue!

sudo gedit /usr/lib/ruby/1.8/alexandria/ui/iconview_tooltips.rb

--- iconview_tooltips.rb.orig 2008-02-22 21:19:07.000000000 -0700
+++ iconview_tooltips.rb 2008-03-23 01:29:41.000000000 -0600
@@ -98,7 +98,8 @@
   end

   def on_motion(view, event)
- tree_path = view.get_path(event.x, event.y)
+ tree_path = nil
+ #tree_path = view.get_path(event.x, event.y)

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

The manual fix indeed works, but after you've applied it you can't add an author anymore. I haven't detected other flaws.

[Richard Chase (richardchase)]

I've experienced exactly the same problem, since I upgraded to the hardy heron(?) on an AMD64

[Mike Basinger (mike.basinger)]

Seems fixed in Ubuntu 8.10.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package alexandria - 0.6.4.1-0ubuntu1

---------------
alexandria (0.6.4.1-0ubuntu1) karmic; urgency=low

  * New upstream release: (LP: #346565)
    - Better GUI feedback when adding books by ISBN
    - Removed the obsolete Amazon (ECS) provider and replaced it with the new
      AWS-based Amazon provider
    - Fixed several book providers (DeaStore, Siciliano, AdLibris & WorldCat)
    - Temporarily removed some broken providers
    - Now supports non-CueCat "keyboard wedge" barcode scanners;
      no settings interface yet, but you can run gconf-editor /apps/alexandria
      and set barcode_scanner to KeyboardWedge
    - Better (though not perfect) handling of character encoding
    - Improved stability (fewer crashes)
    - Bug fixes:
      [#19042] Icon view tooltips cause crashes on x86_64 (LP: #218715)
               [Work-around for an issue with ruby-gnome2 (pre 0.17.0)]
      [#20080] Icon view tooltips cause crashes when publisher not defined
      [#23908] Adding manually without ISBN is unstable
      [#10929] Usability: advanced settings checkbox invisible without Ruby/ZOOM
      [#20168] Cannot use non-western characters in Library names
      [#16707] Cancelling image change in book properties not as expected
      [#20201] Cannot export to ONIX or Tellico format
      [#9010] Crashes when cancelling a library import
  * debian/control:
    - bump Depends on ruby-gnome to 0.16
    - add Depends on libhtmlentities-ruby
    - add misc:Depends
  * debian/rules:
    - no longer move debian/tmp to debian/alexandria, that's not needed anymore
    - don't call dh_desktop

 -- Andreas Moog <email address hidden> Mon, 29 Jun 2009 16:29:43 +0200

[Sense Egbert Hofstede (sense)]

Since Alexandria is no longer shipped in Ubuntu and since I haven't been able to reproduce this issue for a long time, I am closing the task for ruby-gnome2 for the sake of tidiness.