firefox with gtk-qt-engine dies mentioning RenderBadPicture and a failed assertion

[Martin von Gagern]

Binary package hint: firefox

firefox is extremely unstable on my intrepid at the moment. It dies repeatedly without any discernible common cause. When started from the command line, the error messages look like this:

QPixmap: Invalid pixmap parameters
The program 'firefox' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'RenderBadPicture (invalid Picture parameter)'.
  (Details: serial 3484417 error_code 176 request_code 152 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.)
Locking assertion failure. Backtrace:
#0 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0 [0xb64917c7]
#1 /usr/lib/libxcb-xlib.so.0(xcb_xlib_lock+0x2e) [0xb649196e]
#2 /usr/lib/libX11.so.6 [0xb6af0619]
#3 /usr/lib/libXrender.so.1(XRenderFreePicture+0x41) [0xb6ba1f41]
#4 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4 [0xb42606ff]
#5 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4 [0xb42611bd]
#6 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4(_ZN7QPixmap5derefEv+0x5d) [0xb42559ed]
#7 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4(_ZN7QPixmapD1Ev+0x30) [0xb4255df0]
#8 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4 [0xb4347817]
#9 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4(_ZN12QPaintEngineD2Ev+0x2f) [0xb428f53f]
#10 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4 [0xb433eeb2]
#11 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4 [0xb426065c]
#12 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4 [0xb42611bd]
#13 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4(_ZN7QPixmap5derefEv+0x5d) [0xb42559ed]
#14 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4(_ZN7QPixmapD2Ev+0x30) [0xb4255e50]
#15 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4 [0xb425b0fa]
#16 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4 [0xb425b76f]
#17 /usr/lib/libQtGui.so.4 [0xb425ad9a]
#18 /lib/tls/i686/cmov/libc.so.6(exit+0x89) [0xb7d82d69]
#19 /usr/lib/libgdk-x11-2.0.so.0 [0xb66a76c7]

[Martin von Gagern (gagern)]

I wonder whether this might be related to gtk-qt-engine. Reasons for this:

My firefox worked all right on hardy with KDE 3.5. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=5739519 however mentions the issue on hardy with KDE 4.1. So KDE 4.1 might be somehow involved.

The backtrace mentions quite a lot of QT 4 methods.

My firefox had general problems with widgets; the tabs lost their frames after a mouse over highlight, the scrollbars would occasionally display only half a knob, and after scrolling I had a high chance of widgets within the page getting rendered with no border. All of this went away when I changed my GTK engine.

I've changed my GTK engine to Raleigh, and so far things seem to work. The problem is that with seemingly random failures, you can never be sure that the issue is really resolved.

[Martin von Gagern (gagern)]

Confirmed to be related to gtk-qt. After change of gtk engine, I did a day's work without a browser crash, where it used to crash several times a hour before. The original setting was to have GTK apps follow KDE's style, which is Plastique in my case. Has anyone else tried to reproduce this yet?

[nobbie (nobbie-grue)]

I can confirm this behaviour too. I was seeing regular crashes of Firefox with the same backtrace as above while using GTK-Qt. Changing the engine to Raleigh has resolved the crashes.

[freedev (v-damore)]

I have experienced this behaviour.
Following your suggestions using KDE System Settings I have change GTK Styles to blubuntu, the KDE Widget style and Window Decoration to Oxygen.
After using qtconfig I have changed the style to Oxygen.
Now the enviroment seems to be stable.
I have also experienced that the environment become stable using the --sync parameter

[Ariel Faigon (ariel.faigon)]

Just want to confirm I see this too very often.

Firefox 3.x used to be stable as a rock (no crashes for weeks) under Hardy with KDE 3.5

After upgrading to Intrepid (KDE4, new QT, new Xorg) it started crashing every hour or so with SEGV after the X assertion failure. Here's how a session looks like when I start firefox from a shell:

<code>
$ /usr/bin/firefox

(firefox:30311): atk-bridge-WARNING **: AT_SPI_REGISTRY was not started at
session startup.

(firefox:30311): atk-bridge-WARNING **: IOR not set.

(firefox:30311): atk-bridge-WARNING **: Could not locate registry

[Note: the above messages appear at startup, and are probably unrelated.
 then firefox works fine for a while and finally crashes with this:]

QPixmap: Invalid pixmap parameters
The program 'firefox' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'RenderBadPicture (invalid Picture parameter)'.
  (Details: serial 955915 error_code 169 request_code 152 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.)
Segmentation fault
52.779u 3.292s 25:38.58 3.6% 0Kshar+0Kunshar+0Kmax 2488i/24912o 14pf+0swaps+91125rec
</code>

[Ariel Faigon (ariel.faigon)]

More users reporting "firefox closes without explanation"
If they start firefox from the panel, and don't watch their logs this crash looks just like they describe:

     http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=953000

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

not a firefox bug if its a gtk-qt engine thing.

[Michael Marley (mamarley)]

This also happens to me using Kubuntu 8.10 x64. I get the same error mentioned in the bug report.

[Michael Marley (mamarley)]

This also occurs with the Jaunty alpha 64-bit. I think this bug should be upgraded to high importance because there are alot of people who prefer to use Firefox even on KDE, and this crash occurs in the default configuration.

[Pawel Dyda (pawel-dyda)]

I can't understand why it is "Undecided". This still happens with Firefox 3.0.6 (which is rather obvious, since it is not Firefox bug). It is really big pain, as Firefox crashes frequently.

[sebbar (sebbar-gazeta)]

Still "Undecided"??

[David Thomas (davidwhthomas)]

Changing the setting in

System Settings > Appearance > GTK Styles and Fonts

from 'Use my KDE Style' to 'Use another style' -> 'Raleigh'

fixed it for me too. And it fixed the ugly form element widgets in firefox too.

/Intrepid KDE 4.2

[Jonathan Thomas (echidnaman)]

Sadly, gtk-qt-engine is a quite broken piece of software and has been removed from distribution. (See bug 404930)
Unfortunately this means that the large number of bugs will not be seeing fixes. :(

For now, the best integration option for KDE is the QtCurve style, (gtk2-engines-qtcurve) which offers a theme quite similar to the default Oxygen theme. The configuration module for gtk-qt-engine has been salvaged and is now living in the kcm-gtk package, which will be available and installed by default in Kubuntu 9.10.

Thanks for understanding. This package tried its best, but in the end did not live up to the standards required by anybody who doesn't like looking at a broken Oxygen imitation.