segfault in unity-window-decorator

[Guenther Demetz]

I upgraded last week to Ubuntu 11.4.
Since that after working some minutes, from a certain point on, the window-decorators of all windows are no more rendered
and in the /var/kern.log appears a couple of lines like following:

Apr 29 15:25:08 phx00080 kernel: [ 6533.890171] show_signal_msg: 24 callbacks suppressed
Apr 29 15:25:08 phx00080 kernel: [ 6533.890180] unity-window-de[1787]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfe63a90 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
...
[manual machine reboot]
...
May 2 08:36:47 phx00080 kernel: [ 2521.866814] show_signal_msg: 24 callbacks suppressed
May 2 08:36:47 phx00080 kernel: [ 2521.866826] unity-window-de[1738]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfdf6de0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
...
[manual machine reboot]
...
May 2 09:49:15 phx00080 kernel: [ 4048.226159] show_signal_msg: 24 callbacks suppressed
May 2 09:49:15 phx00080 kernel: [ 4048.226169] unity-window-de[1712]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bf937120 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]

1)lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 11.04
Release: 11.04

2) I don't know which is the responsible package
apt-cache policy compiz
compiz:
  Installed: 1:0.9.4+bzr20110415-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 1:0.9.4+bzr20110415-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 1:0.9.4+bzr20110415-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://de.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main i386 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

3) --
4) window-decorators of all windows are no more rendered, only the content of the windows are shown.

[Nuber Atix (subbota)]

Agree this bug.

1) grep 'unity-window' /var/log/kern.log* -C 1
kern.log:May 3 10:42:54 fim kernel: [250823.695734] unity-window-de[2270]: segfault at 318 ip 0000000000415d6f sp 00007fff04251ca0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[400000+1b000]
kern.log.1:Apr 25 16:24:55 fim kernel: [361688.545366] unity-window-de[2458]: segfault at 318 ip 0000000000415d6f sp 00007fffe7e27620 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[400000+1b000]
kern.log.1:Apr 27 19:15:58 fim kernel: [544778.736894] unity-window-de[1251]: segfault at 318 ip 0000000000415d6f sp 00007fff3efd1750 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[400000+1b000]
kern.log.1:Apr 28 17:29:26 fim kernel: [79490.029996] unity-window-de[2524]: segfault at 318 ip 0000000000415d6f sp 00007fff722f6290 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[400000+1b000]

2) lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 11.04
Release: 11.04

3) apt-cache policy compiz
compiz:
  Installed: 1:0.9.4+bzr20110415-0ubuntu2
  Candidate: 1:0.9.4+bzr20110415-0ubuntu2
  Version table:
 *** 1:0.9.4+bzr20110415-0ubuntu2 0
        500 http://ru.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ natty/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status

[Matt Kowske (jmkowske)]

This happens to me almost once an hour if not more... the output of the above commands is identical on my system. I will ad that before the latest update I was having terrible problems with compiz freezing the system (mouse still moveable and could switch desktops but the GUI was unresponsive). That required a restart of X to fix, and now I don't have that problem anymore but this new issue has come up.

I resolve with 'compiz --replace &' when it happens.

[coolcow (ruiz-jm)]

I confirm this. I got the same error on a fresh installation of 11.04 (32bit).

/var/log/kern.log.1:May 2 10:24:09 roberto kernel: [230110.568765] unity-window-de[11839]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfe85ed0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 2 10:45:59 roberto kernel: [231418.755883] unity-window-de[5389]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfc148a0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 2 11:03:13 roberto kernel: [232450.469388] unity-window-de[15064]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bff136a0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 2 14:26:13 roberto kernel: [244609.674162] unity-window-de[18322]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfbe3c20 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 2 15:52:26 roberto kernel: [249773.419615] unity-window-de[23457]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfe99ce0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 2 17:18:32 roberto kernel: [254931.485597] unity-window-de[25105]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bf98b1f0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 2 18:43:38 roberto kernel: [260028.422766] unity-window-de[28983]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfe0e0a0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 2 19:07:14 roberto kernel: [261442.239290] unity-window-de[31985]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfc2b4d0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 2 19:23:07 roberto kernel: [262392.712702] unity-window-de[1147]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfe1ec80 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 2 19:35:51 roberto kernel: [263156.091742] unity-window-de[5903]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfee90c0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 3 10:01:35 roberto kernel: [315010.818353] unity-window-de[11047]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bf97c470 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 3 10:33:45 roberto kernel: [316937.569027] unity-window-de[12100]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bf9c9330 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 3 14:17:07 roberto kernel: [330315.726788] unity-window-de[12773]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfae4f50 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 3 14:32:05 roberto kernel: [331212.124546] unity-window-de[20615]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bf9e4920 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 3 15:12:04 roberto kernel: [333607.765554] unity-window-de[21642]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bf8e2150 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 3 15:57:57 roberto kernel: [336355.807773] unity-window-de[24383]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfa056b0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 3 16:10:27 roberto kernel: [337104.448203] unity-window-de[27945]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfd1f000 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
/var/log/kern.log.1:May 3 16:51:17 roberto ke...

[david wood (david-wood)]

Seeing this as well - every couple of hours, the decorator will segfault. Tough to correlate with any other activity. This is by far the most serious problem I'm seeing after moving to 11.04.

[david wood (david-wood)]

Though the frequency... every couple of hours... sometimes it's every couple of minutes. Here's another one:

[28807.440333] unity-window-de[26037]: segfault at 318 ip 0000000000415d6f sp 00007fff78222370 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[400000+1b000]

[Bob Leclair (pastagage)]

Same problem happens with me on 11.04, and it is not the first time:

May 19 10:18:00 Lulu kernel: [ 3667.902106] show_signal_msg: 6 callbacks suppressed
May 19 10:18:00 Lulu kernel: [ 3667.902113] unity-window-de[1676]: segfault at 318 ip 0000000000415d6f sp 00007fff7e413e00 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[400000+1b000]

[Gareth Stephens (f-launchpad-gstephens-fastmail-co-uk)]

I appear to have the same problem:

May 15 19:22:03 Godzilla kernel: [ 5429.160590] unity-window-de[2003]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfc73270 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
May 18 20:33:28 Godzilla kernel: [ 1382.500994] unity-window-de[2081]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bf91e540 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]
May 19 15:43:04 Godzilla kernel: [15068.052567] unity-window-de[1954]: segfault at 228 ip 0805be37 sp bfff5540 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[8048000+17000]

[Dirk Simon (iskrid)]

got the same problem ob 11.04 64bit

kernel: [50756.788871] unity-window-de[8509]: segfault at 318 ip 0000000000415d6f sp 00007fff97d0a3d0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[400000+1b000]

it's completly repeatable
- use a SWING GUI e.g. DbSchema from WiseCoders
- open some dialog and close it
- everytime this segfault happens and all frames around my windows are away
- additionally the mouse position, passed to SWING is wrong

[m1fcj (hakan-koseoglu)]

Repeated with Swing GUI here on upto date natty with Oracle SQL Developer v3.

[m1fcj (hakan-koseoglu)]

At least it could be respawn automatically. It becomes pretty annoying fast.
To get any work done, running the following on a screen session!

 until ( false ); do
    unity-window-decorator;
done &

[david wood (david-wood)]

Oddly enough, I seem to be able to get this to happen 100% consistently when clicking the final Commit button, when committing project changes via subversion in the Java-based IntelliJ Idea IDE.

Strange, I know - but since I finally figured it out, I've done it over and over again as an experiment, and it is 100% reliable. I work in that IDE all day and make many thousands of UI interactions with it, including dozens or hundreds of button presses. It always worked flawlessly in Ubuntu before now, and still does, with exactly this one exception. That one, specific button in the entire IDE crashes the unity window decorator every time. I'm talking i.e.:

unity-window-de[2275]: segfault at 318 ip 0000000000415d6f sp 00007fffbcd51af0 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[400000+1b000]

Pressing it via both keyboard shortcut and mouse click trigger it. I should add, the functioning of the IDE itself is never affected.

The specific - and observable and debuggable - nature of this may provide a clue as to what is making unity crash.

[Brent Hoover (zenweasel)]

I too have the problem and am using the IntelliJ-based PyCharm as the primary program I run all day. I thought it might be related to dual-monitors but ran for a while with just the laptop screen and still happened. Anything to help please let me know. I see this coming up a lot on the forums and people are getting the unity-window-decorator fix and being placated by it, but I think the problem is relatively common.

[Carlo de Wolf (wolfc)]

Another (possibly more effective) work-around is:
$ gtk-window-decorator --replace

With that IntelliJ (and the overall desktop) is usable again. :-)

[Omer Akram (om26er)]

this is not a kernel issue.

[alfabravoteam (alfabravoteam)]

Another replica of this issue over here.

One could agree with #Omer Akram about the nature of this bug. Most likely to be a clash of unity stuff which actually runs (!!) with the Gnome Classic stuff I'm currently using in my session.

I chose not to use Unity, I logged in with Gnome Classic. Then opened Oracle SQL Developer like #m1fcj did and after saving and closing a script (closing a tab), all the window decorations went away... and the workaround from #Carlo de Wolf does not work happily 'cause the gtk-window-decorator does not take into account the theme settings (yes, I'm kinda pushing it, if one wants to work then the idea is useful).

==== OS info

alfabravo@alfabravoTiger:~$ uname -a
Linux alfabravoTiger 2.6.38-10-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP Thu Jun 2 21:32:22 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

==== kern.log (fragment)

Jun 9 14:29:12 alfabravoTiger kernel: [94815.087618] Xorg:1103 conflicting memory types d195d000-d1cd9000 write-combining<->uncached-minus
Jun 9 14:29:12 alfabravoTiger kernel: [94815.087626] reserve_memtype failed 0xd195d000-0xd1cd9000, track write-combining, req write-combining
Jun 9 15:13:34 alfabravoTiger kernel: [97477.439528] unity-window-de[2057]: segfault at 318 ip 0000000000415d6f sp 00007fff45dd1180 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[400000+1b000]

==== syslog (fragment)

Jun 9 15:13:34 alfabravoTiger kernel: [97477.439528] unity-window-de[2057]: segfault at 318 ip 0000000000415d6f sp 00007fff45dd1180 error 6 in unity-window-decorator[400000+1b000]