DOSBox crashes with Amulets & Armor

[Daniel Piovezan]

I'm running Linux Mint 15 64-bit (Ubuntu 13.04 Raring Ringtail), an NVIDIA graphics card, with the current-updates driver. First it's necessary to download Amulets & Armor from the official website:
http://amuletsandarmor.com/download.htm
Play the game for a few minutes, and it'll crash. The only thing the terminal spits when it crashes is "Segmentation fault.".
The game runs fine on Mint 13 in the same machine and same driver, so I guess it's a problem with the Raring package. The same problem happens with the old shareware version of the game. It may affect other games.

[shankao (shankao)]

Well, if it leads to a segmentation fault, it's probably not about the packaging (unless some patch delta has being introduced). But it could be a problem about the raring libraries that dosbox uses being different in Mint.

Is there any special pattern while playing the game that makes this bug easier to reproduce?

[Daniel Piovezan (danielbzd)]

Special pattern? Not that I noticed... but hey, I can install Raring here and test if it happens too! Imma do that.

[Daniel Piovezan (danielbzd)]

Hey, sorry for the delay.

I installed Raring and DOSBox and played A&A for about 15 minutes... I was already thinking it was a problem with Mint when our friend segmentation fault showed up. Then a crash report window popped up. It seemed to have some pretty useful info, but I couldn't save it (apparently it was sent to Canonical).

So I have 2 questions: how can I save the crash report thingie in text format or something? And how can I enable it in Mint, just to help me figure out stuff?

[shankao (shankao)]

If a crash report was generated, it should appear under your /var/crash folder. Check for the file name and modification time.

The process that manages such reports in Ubuntu is apport. You can find more info here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport

By looking at the man pages for it, I think that you can attach a crash file in your system into this report with something like this:

apport-bug /var/crash/(your crash file).crash

If that creates a new report, no problem; we can mark them as duplicates.

[Daniel Piovezan (danielbzd)]

Ok, found the crash repport, so I'm attaching it here.

It's a fresh install with updates downloaded during installation, but I'm gonna check if anything needs updating. Also, I forgot to change to the NVIDIA proprietary driver (the one I'm using on Mint). I doubt it makes a difference, but it doesn't hurt to try.

[shankao (shankao)]

Could you better launch the apport-bug command instead? AFAIK, it also processes the crash report with information about your system (like what libraries you have installed). In a terminal, just run:

apport-bug /var/crash/_usr_bin_dosbox.1000.crash

(supposing that you still keep the file in your system)

Thanks!

[shankao (shankao)]

Oh, the report also warns about you having some obsolete packages in your system ("UnreportableReason:
 Você tem alguns pacotes obsoletos instalados. Por favor atualize os pacotes a seguir e verifique se o problema continua a ocorrer:")

Yes, it would be a good idea to upgrade first, as the bug could have being already solved in the new packages. :)

[Daniel Piovezan (danielbzd)]

Ok, I did the apport thingie. Then updated a lot of packages and installed the proprietary driver (the recommended one), the rebooted. I tried playing again, and it crashed again. Did the apport thingie again and I'm uploading the new crash report here, just to be sure.

[shankao (shankao)]

I have being testing this problem, and I can reproduce it on the current Ubuntu version, that matches the last officially released dosbox version: 0.74

Also, I have tried it with the last subversion code and I cannot get the segfault to happen there. It could have being fixed there. More extensive testing can be done, as I couldn't figure out any exact steps to reproduce this problem.

If it's fixed in svn, then it's a matter to wait for the next official dosbox release, or find the actual commit that fixes amulets and armor.

In any case, confirmed in the current ubuntu version.

[shankao (shankao)]

For a fast installable workaround, try this ppa: https://launchpad.net/~emulation/+archive/ubuntu/ppa