nautilus repeated SIGABRT in VMware on live CD and DVD

[Ian! D. Allen]

Binary package hint: nautilus

I used VMware Workstation to create a 1GB/8GB virtual machine, attached
the latest (Feb 28) Jaunty DVD to the CDROM port, and booted it as
"try without installing". Both the CD and DVD versions came up with a
desktop background and a task bar showing nautilus processes starting
and dying - the task bar was filling with nautilus entries and nothing
ever appeared on the desktop.

I started a terminal and did "killall -STOP nautilus" to stop the looping
nautilus and then straced the stopped nautilus process (which resumed
as soon as the strace attached to it). Nautilus quickly died with
a SIGABRT and another nautilus started, which died, etc. I repeated
this STOP/strace sequence twice. Each nautilus died with this system
call pattern:

[...]
read(20, "l\2\1\1\4\0\0\0\360\364\0\0-\0\0\0\6\1s\0\7\0\0\0:1.1687\0\5"..., 2048) = 68
read(20, 0x8cc2968, 2048) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
gettimeofday({1236189516, 845172}, NULL) = 0
writev(20, [{"l\1\0\1\20\0\0\0*\0\0\0\277\0\0\0\1\1o\0E\0\0\0/org/free"..., 208}, {"\v\0\0\0scsi.target\0"..., 16}], 2) = 224
gettimeofday({1236189516, 848212}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=20, events=POLLIN}], 1, 25000) = 1 ([{fd=20, revents=POLLIN}])
read(20, "l\2\1\1\4\0\0\0\361\364\0\0-\0\0\0\6\1s\0\7\0\0\0:1.1687\0\5"..., 2048) = 68
read(20, 0x8cc2968, 2048) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
gettimeofday({1236189516, 848757}, NULL) = 0
writev(20, [{"l\1\0\1&\0\0\0+\0\0\0\267\0\0\0\1\1o\0;\0\0\0/org/free"..., 200}, {"!\0\0\0storage.removable.media_avail"..., 38}], 2) = 238
gettimeofday({1236189516, 849645}, NULL) = 0
poll([{fd=20, events=POLLIN}], 1, 25000) = 1 ([{fd=20, revents=POLLIN}])
read(20, "l\2\1\1\4\0\0\0\362\364\0\0-\0\0\0\6\1s\0\7\0\0\0:1.1687\0\5"..., 2048) = 68
read(20, 0x8cc2968, 2048) = -1 EAGAIN (Resource temporarily unavailable)
mmap2(NULL, 8392704, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS|MAP_STACK, -1, 0) = 0xb5be9000
mprotect(0xb5be9000, 4096, PROT_NONE) = 0
clone(child_stack=0xb63e9424, flags=CLONE_VM|CLONE_FS|CLONE_FILES|CLONE_SIGHAND|CLONE_THREAD|CLONE_SYSVSEM|CLONE_SETTLS|CLONE_PARENT_SETTID|CLONE_CHILD_CLEARTID, parent_tidptr=0xb63e9bd8, {entry_number:6, base_addr:0xb63e9b90, limit:1048575, seg_32bit:1, contents:0, read_exec_only:0, limit_in_pages:1, seg_not_present:0, useable:1}, child_tidptr=0xb63e9bd8) = 16428
futex(0xb795e790, FUTEX_WAKE_PRIVATE, 1) = 1
+++ killed by SIGABRT (core dumped) +++

Both the CD and the DVD do this. The previous Jaunty (Feb 5) worked fine under VMware.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/nautilus
Package: nautilus 1:2.25.91-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: nautilus
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-8-generic i686

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Please try to obtain a backtrace following the instructions at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/DebuggingProgramCrash and upload the backtrace (as an attachment) to the bug report. This will greatly help us in tracking down your problem.

[Ian! D. Allen (idallen)]

Goodness, it's a pain to do all the configuration and download all the
software needed to get a backtrace, isn't it? I'll try to find time to do
all that later. Couldn't you build a little script that would do all the
work, e.g. "ubuntu-backtrace nautilus" would do all those config steps,
download the symbols, etc.? Please make bug reporting and tracing as
painless as possible!

I have more information on the nautilus problem:

I reran my virtual machine. I chose the "Install" menu item from the CD
(which is a virtual CD - the virtual CDROM is attached to the Jaunty
ISO file on my host system) and everything installed fine onto the
virtual disk, and at reboot and login my desktop came up without any
looping/dying nautilus problem.

Then I noticed that the CDROM was listed as "disconnected" - I didn't
have the Ubuntu CDROM icon visible on the desktop and there was a red
"X" over the CDROM in the VMware Workstation status line. So I used
Workstation to enable the CDROM. Boom - nautilus started looping.

I disconnected the virtual CDROM. The looping/dying stopped.

I reconnected the virtual CDROM. The looping/dying started.

I configured a second virtual CDROM and attached it to the ISO file, and
enabled it. The looping/dying started again. I disconnected it.

I attached the virtual CDROM to my real, physical CDROM, stuck in an
old Ubuntu install CD, and enabled it. The CD spun up and the Ubuntu
icon appeared on my desktop. No looping.

So, the nautilus looping/dying problem only happens when the virtual
CDROM is connected to an ISO image in the host file system.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

you can use apport to report crashes, apport-retrace install all the debug symbols required

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

this looks like bug 325973

[Ian! D. Allen (idallen)]

> this looks like bug 325973

It resembles it, but in my case nautilus is actually dying over and over with a SIGABRT,
where the above bug doesn't show that symptom.

Backtrace attached, such as it is.

It's tricky to get a backtrace of a system program that faults every two seconds and dies.
I had to "killall -STOP nautilus", set up the gdb session, and then kill -CONT nautilus and
attach gdb quickly to the pid. I hope the result is useful.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

marking this as dup of bug 344371 since you submitted that one with apport.