gkrellm crashes - segmentation fault - calendar (create_monitor)

[Surak]

After some time running idle, gkrellm crashes with the message (brazilian portuguese): "gkrellm falha de segmentação: Calendário (create_monitor)", from nothing.

This happened before, I solved it by uninstalling pinta. I'm using Kubuntu 11.10. This seems to be a KDE <-> GTK issue. By the way, I could only make Pinta run by installing package gnome-icon-theme-full (see bug 785034).

Note: Gkrellm was running fine for weeks before this happens again. The strange thing is that gkrellm never starts again, just the same error message, no matter if I restart session, X, or reboot.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: gkrellm 2.3.4-1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-12.20-generic 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-12-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia
ApportVersion: 1.23-0ubuntu4
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Nov 5 10:33:35 2011
InstallationMedia: Kubuntu 11.10 "Oneiric Ocelot" - Release amd64 (20111011)
SourcePackage: gkrellm
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)

[Surak (smkozasa)]

OK, this time I uninstalled pinta and it did not solve. Rebooted. Still same error message. Removed gkrellm itself and gnome-icon-theme-full with aptitude, which also removed gnome-icon-theme and humanity-theme. Renamed .gkrellm2 directory from my home Rebooted, reinstalled gkrellm with aptitude and it is now working again. Restored previous .gkrellm2 directory with its contents, reinstalled all the krells I was using before and it is still working.

I am not sure if the order of things I did above is precise, but hope will be enough to give some clue. Thanks.

[Surak (smkozasa)]

OK, it happened again. No pinta, no gnome-icon-theme-full installed, only gkrellm. I was going to uninstall gkrellm with aptitude and noticed that it suggest the removal of a lot of packages (this happened the previous times, too, but I used apt-get to remove gkrellm):

# aptitude remove gkrellm
The following packages will be REMOVED:
  gkrellm
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B of archives. After unpacking 2.314 kB will be freed.
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
  gkrellmoon: Depende: gkrellm (>= 2.0.0) but it is not going to be installed.
  gkrellweather: Depende: gkrellm (>= 1.0.2) but it is not going to be installed.
  gkrelltop: Depende: gkrellm but it is not going to be installed.
  gkrellm-x86info: Depende: gkrellm (>= 2.1.4) but it is not going to be installed.
open: 21; closed: 563; defer: 3; conflict: 3 .The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

       Remove the following packages:
1) flashplugin-downloader
2) flashplugin-installer
3) gkrellm-x86info
4) gkrellmoon
5) gkrelltop
6) gkrellweather
7) ia32-libs-multiarch
8) libacl1
9) libasound2
10) libasound2-plugins
11) libasyncns0
12) libatk1.0-0
13) libattr1
14) libaudio2
15) libavahi-client3
16) libavahi-common3
17) libc6
18) libc6-xen
19) libcairo2
20) libcomerr2
21) libcups2
22) libcupsimage2
23) libcurl3
24) libdatrie1
25) libdb5.1
26) libdbus-1-3
27) libdrm-intel1
28) libdrm-nouveau1a
29) libdrm-radeon1
30) libdrm2
31) libexpat1
32) libffi6...

[Surak (smkozasa)]

Now it didn't work. I even tried to install lubuntu-desktop, then ubuntu-desktop in the hope that some gtk-based problem would be solved, but it didn't work. Even if I log into Ubuntu-desktop, it will give the same error message. I did my best to uninstall gnome and have a working KDE instalation, but the same error message persists. I tried to install the latest version from gkrellm.net (Debian unstable) but I get the same error message. I'm giving up for now.

[Surak (smkozasa)]

After almost crashing my system by unsinstalling gnome components that I supposed not be necessary anymore I finally got my kubuntu working again. Some programs were missing, I managed to reinstall them, like flashplugin-installer (i tried to use ubuntu.mirror.pop-sc.mp.br but I got a 404 file-not-found error. I tried ubuntu-archive.locaweb.com.br but it pointed to a non-existent 11.0 version of flash, then changed to official canonical brazilian server and was able to reinstall it. Also reinstalled chromium-browser and opera brower from their deb repository.

Then I gave it a try and... guess what? gkrellm is running again... Sorry, but I just can't figure out what package fixed it. Though, when installing flashplugin-installer it installs libpango1.0, libfontconfig1 and suggestive names like libfreetype6.

[Patola (patola)]

Had the same problem as you. Solved the following way:
$ export LC_COLLATE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.ISO-8859-1
$ gkrellm &

So it seems like an internationalization or character set issue. You can make a wrapper script to start gkrellm this way, e.g.:

[patola@bmw patola]% cat /usr/local/bin/gk
#!/bin/zsh
export LC_COLLATE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 LC_CTYPE=en_US.ISO-8859-1 LC_MESSAGES=en_US.ISO-8859-1
/usr/local/bin/launch /usr/bin/gkrellm

[Patola (patola)]

Ooops, sorry. /usr/local/bin/launch is also a custom-made script by me:

[patola@bmw patola]% cat /usr/local/bin/launch
#!/bin/bash
exec /usr/bin/nohup "$@" > /dev/null 2>&1 &

btw.: on the first script, you better change /bin/zsh to /bin/bash also. Not everyone loves zsh :P

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Surak (smkozasa)]

Thank you Patola, next time it happens I'll try it.

Well, yesterday it did happen again. I tried unsinstalling and
installing some packages again. Installed Pinta (which now
worked, just aptitude install and it ran). No need to install
gnome-icon-theme-full, but I installed it anyway to see if
gkrellm came back, but no use. Tried to uninstall and reinstall
flashplugin-installer to check if it was the solution last time,
but no, still the error message. So I just gave up, used the
computer some times during the day and suspended it. Today, I
wake it up and give another try: gkrellm was running again...

[]s,

Silvio

Enviado com o Thunderbird usando KDE (Kubuntu) GNU/Linux
Livre, mais seguro e estável

---

Em 20-11-2011 00:12, Patola escreveu:
> Ooops, sorry. /usr/local/bin/launch is also a custom-made script by me:
>
> [patola@bmw patola]% cat /usr/local/bin/launch
> #!/bin/bash
> exec /usr/bin/nohup "$@"> /dev/null 2>&1&
>
>
> btw.: on the first script, you better change /bin/zsh to /bin/bash also. Not everyone loves zsh :P
>

[Surak (smkozasa)]

OK, something ocurred to me: the error message says something about "calendar". OMG, could it be? Yes, as I see my posts dates, apparently the bug happens on fridays and maybe saturdays... Well I may be wrong, but this could mean gkrellm crashes because the character string for friday or saturday in Portuguese has some character that makes gkrellm crash? A quick test changing the computer date will answer that...

 CONFIRMED, the problem is the word in Portuguese for saturday: "sabado". OK as this is obviously related to character set (as we can see from the solution posted by Patola), please note that "sabado" has a graphical accent on the first 'A' ("sábado") and my gkrellm shows the first 3 letters of the day of the week. And this explains why the other solutions I tried didn't solve the problem always. In fact, they did not! What solved the problem everytime was the passing of time and the change from saturday to sunday!

To make it short: with Kubuntu 11.10, gkrellm apparently now crashes when trying to show characters out of the Ascii set.

[Surak (smkozasa)]

OK, as a workaround, like suggested by patola above, I used the export command. I just noticed that a single:

#!/bin/sh
export LANG="en_US"
gkrellm

script is enough (unless you don't like your calendar in English).

This bug seems related to libpango, since pango is mentioned in the gkrellm configuration for the date format.

[Surak (smkozasa)]

Noticed this bug does not happen anymore, on saturdays, due to the accent in Portuguese for the word saturday ("sábado"). I started gkrellm in Saucy without the export command in comment #11, after changing system date to saturday. No more crashes. This seems to be fixed.