All SDL apps crash in DirectFB on PPC

[Leslie Viljoen]

This problem's first symptom is that you are completely logged out of your X session as soon as you try to run something like Tuxpaint on PPC. I have seen it on Fedora, Debian Lenny and Intrepid. Etch worked fine, probably because directfb was version 0.9.

I have stepped though Tuxpaint until an SDL init:

SDL_Init(1048625)
(Those flags are: SDL_INIT_VIDEO | SDL_INIT_TIMER | SDL_INIT_AUDO | SDL_INIT_NOPARACHUTE)

I then stepped through the SDL code until here:
DirectFB_CreateDevice (devindex=<value optimized out>) at ../../src/video/directfb/SDL_DirectFB_video.c:123

DirectFB_CreateDevice crashes. It sometimes prints the error below, but mostly
it doesn't print anything, it just terminates the session. Since it looks permissions related I have
run everything as root but that doesn't help.

---------8x-------------8x-----------8x-----------------8x---------------8x--------------------

     =======================| DirectFB 1.0.1 |=======================
          (c) 2001-2007 The DirectFB Organization (directfb.org)
          (c) 2000-2004 Convergence (integrated media) GmbH
        ------------------------------------------------------------

(*) DirectFB/Core: Single Application Core. (2008-09-12 20:02)
(*) Direct/Memcpy: Using ppcasm_memcpy()
(!) DirectFB/Core: Could not initialize 'system' core!
    --> Access denied!

     =======================| DirectFB 1.0.1 |=======================
          (c) 2001-2007 The DirectFB Organization (directfb.org)
          (c) 2000-2004 Convergence (integrated media) GmbH
        ------------------------------------------------------------

(*) DirectFB/Core: Single Application Core. (2008-09-12 20:02)
(*) Direct/Memcpy: Using libc memcpy()
(!) DirectFB/Core: Could not initialize 'system' core!
    --> Access denied!

Error: I could not initialize video and/or the timer!
The Simple DirectMedia Layer error that occurred was:
DirectFBCreate: Access denied!

[Caroline Ford (secretlondon)]

This is a bug in upstream SDL?

[Leslie Viljoen (leslieviljoen)]

I think the problem is lower than SDL, but I could not determine where with any certainty.
You can follow more of the discussion at http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=506666

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Leslie Viljoen, thank you for reporting this and helping make Ubuntu better.

As per https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases, Ubuntu Intrepid reached EOL on April 30, 2010.

Is this reproducible in a supported release?

[Leslie Viljoen (leslieviljoen)]

Sorry, this was reported over 7 years ago, I doubt it has any relevance any more. My old Mac Mini is long since packed away and probably too slow to be worth using with today's software. Thanks for taking a look though.

Should I close this bug report or something?

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Leslie Viljoen, it is your call. If you want to put it back into use, feel free to unpack it and test a supported release.

If not, please mark this Status Invalid.

[Leslie Viljoen (leslieviljoen)]

Marked invalid as requested.