Java Eclipse killed by X error

[Ichthyostega]

Eclipse crashes on each attempt of picking an autocompletion proposal. Showstopper.

I am test driving Ubuntu Lucid since three weeks. Got this error occasionally. But since the last round of updates (since end of last week, which I installed yesterday) it happens reproducible. Restarting X doesn't help.
For an autocompletion proposal, Eclipse creates an hovering window next the text cursor. The crash happens when this window is disposed (either by picking a proposal with mouse or keypress, or by just closing it by pressing ESC or clicking outside). At that point, the space occupied of the window remains black for about 0.2 sec, (which is abnormal; usually this space is filled with the current background colour). Then App Windows get destroyed; console output:

> The program 'Eclipse' received an X Window System error.
> This probably reflects a bug in the program.
> The error was 'RenderBadPicture (invalid Picture parameter)'.
> (Details: serial 80834 error_code 161 request_code 149 minor_code 7)
> (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
> that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
> To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
> option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
> backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

I am running a TwinView on a NVidia card, using the nouveau driver.

[Ichthyostega (ichthyo)]

Just to add: the Eclipse installation was copied from my previous workstation, running Ubuntu Hardy. It is auto-upgraded every week (stable series). On the old box, I used java-sun 5 and 6, in both cases without major problems in the last months.

[Ichthyostega (ichthyo)]

Now I've tried both an sun-java6-jdk (installed as deb from ubuntu partner repo) and a manually installed java-5-jre.
Without success. Even the details remain the same: "error_code 161 request_code 149 minor_code 7"

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

this is a locally installed version of eclipse; please report the problem where you downloaded this version
is this issue reproducible with the eclipse version as distributed in the eclipse packages in Ubuntu lucid?

[Micah Gersten (micahg)]

Do you have xulrunner-1.9.1 installed? It's not needed for Lucid and is most likely causing the issue.

[Ichthyostega (ichthyo)]

No I don't have xulrunner installed (I am aware it causes problems with eclipse)

[Ichthyostega (ichthyo)]

> this is a locally installed version of eclipse; please report the problem where you downloaded this version

come on :)
This problem is clearly caused by the upgrade to Ubuntu Lucid.
All other colleagues in the Team here are using the same software at the same patch level without problems on Hardy.

Moreover, I see the same crashes with other Java Applications occasionally (DB Visualizer, LDAP browser, and the SWING Apps we're writing here). The error message in the crashdump is the same ('RenderBadPicture (invalid Picture parameter)'.) Just it wasn't reproducible in any of these cases.

> is this issue reproducible with the eclipse version as distributed in the eclipse packages in Ubuntu lucid?
At the time when I first did the upgrade I tried that, and the behaviour was the same.

But meanwhile Eclipse Helios is released, while the Ubuntu package is still 3.5. So this is no longer an option

[Ichthyostega (ichthyo)]

Well.. I should add that I haven't installed the latest Ubuntu updates, which include a kernel and xserver update.

I'd suspect the problem to be somewhere between xserver and the nuveau driver.
(The PC hardware I'm using here is 64bit, while we're using a 32bit Ubuntu versions, due to constraints with the target platform for the C++ software we're also developing here in this team)

OK, I'll report you back after I did the mentioned latest upgrade, but that may likely be next week. -- Thanks

[Matthias Klose (doko)]

> This problem is clearly caused by the upgrade to Ubuntu Lucid

no, it's interaction of the libraries shipped by eclipse (xulrunner/swt-gtk), which don't play nice.

[Benjamin Drung (bdrung)]

The bug description sounds like a xulrunner issue.

[Ichthyostega (ichthyo)]

Hi, wanted to report back....

I've now installed the recent updates, which included an xserver upgrade.
After that, the problem disappeared. I've now used Eclipse 3.6 (Helios) a day without any crash.

Another observation is that now the overall screen display in Java applications got significantly faster

Anyway, for my part the bug isn't reproducible anymore