gnome-screenshot won't save to a ram disk

[Kevin Hunter]

From the department of random-bugs:

I've created a ramdisk in my $HOME directory as such:

$ pwd
/home/kevin

$ sudo mount -t ramfs kevins_ram_disk ram/

$ mount | grep kevins_ram_disk
kevins_ram_disk on /home/kevin/ram type ramfs (rw)

Now, when I try to save a screenshot to that directory: it silently seems to just not work. I don't see the file in the normal "Desktop" or "kevin" ($HOME), or "/tmp" directories.

I wonder if this is related to https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/71492

Other information

$ uname -a
Linux hani 2.6.24-19-generic #1 SMP Fri Jul 11 21:01:46 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 8.04.1
Release: 8.04
Codename: hardy

[Kevin Hunter (hunteke)]

Bah, I can't operate cut and paste properly. The similar bug would be

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/31994 , not 71492. Sorry for my C&P ineptitude.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Confirming here:

chr1s@chris-desktop:~$ apt-cache policy gnome-utils
gnome-utils:
  Installed: 2.20.0.1-1ubuntu5
  Candidate: 2.20.0.1-1ubuntu5
  Version table:
 *** 2.20.0.1-1ubuntu5 0
        500 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

Steps for me to recreate:
1. mkdir ~/ram_disk
2. sudo mount -t ramfs ramfs ~/ram_disk
3. sudo chmod +w ~/ram_disk
4. touch ~/ram_disk/test and verify that I have write permission
5. Run gnome-screenshot from terminal and attempt to save to RAM disk.

Doing this causes gnome-screenshot to die with the following error in the terminal:

handle_transfer_vfs_error!

[Kevin Hunter (hunteke)]

Good call. I didn't do a proper cut and paste (again!), but I also do a

$ sudo chown kevin:kevin $HOME/ram

so that I can write to it, etc. The touch is a good test. I haven't run it from the CLI, so I can't confirm that it's crashing, just that it "doesn't work." Helpful, I know. :-)

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Thank you for your bug report. This bug has been reported to the developers of the software. You can track it and make comments here: http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=554212

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the bug should be fixed in the 2.25 version which will be uploaded to jaunty

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the bug should already be fixed in the intrepid version, closing it now, you can reopen if you still get the issue though

[Kevin Hunter (hunteke)]

No need to reopen this bug if it's fixed, but a data point:

I wonder if the internal issue was that the vfs/gnome-screenshot was checking for enough free space prior to saving? If so, I believe the RAMFS doesn't report that. So, my workaround was to change that dir to tmpfs:

$ sudo mount -t tmpfs -o size=4M,noatime,mode=755,uid=kevin,gid=kevin kevins_ram_disk ~/ram

The tmpfs requires a size (e.g. 4M) and therefore lets the VFS check this. It's still a bug that it couldn't deal well with ramfs , but it's actually better to have a size limitation for my uses anyway ...

[Kevin Hunter (hunteke)]

Just tested this in Lucid. This does indeed seem fixed. Thanks, bug watch updater.