vim.gtk3 crashes frequently with SIGSEGV in ffi_call_unix64()

[Gilles Schintgen]

Hi, vim-gtk3 crashes so often on my system that it's borderline unusable.
My system is a clean install of Ubuntu 16.04. I also (temporarily) renamed my customized ~/.vimrc and ~/.vim. My system is up-to-date as of today (2016-08-09); installed vim-gtk3 is 2:7.4.1689-3ubuntu1.1.

The crash happens only (but very frequently, not always) when I launch gvim, either by calling it from a shell or by double-clicking a file in Nautilus. Note that the crash is independent of whether I'm opening a file or not. (At least I tried both variations from the terminal.)

There's also a report on vim's bugtracker, but since unity appears in the backtrace, the consensus is that it's probably Ubuntu-specific.

ProblemType: Crash
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 16.04
Package: vim-gtk3 2:7.4.1689-3ubuntu1.1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 4.4.0-31.50-generic 4.4.13
Uname: Linux 4.4.0-31-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_uvm nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.1-0ubuntu2.1
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Tue Aug 9 14:34:31 2016
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/vim.gtk3
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-07-10 (29 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160420.1)
ProcCmdline: gvim -f /home/username/Documents/schoul/2016/1G-TODO/01-systemes-equations-TODO/chap01_systemes-equations-NOTES.tex
Signal: 11
SourcePackage: vim
StacktraceTop:
 ?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libunity-gtk3-parser.so.0
 ?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgio-2.0.so.0
 ?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgio-2.0.so.0
 ?? () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgio-2.0.so.0
 ffi_call_unix64 () from /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libffi.so.6
Title: vim.gtk3 crashed with SIGSEGV in ffi_call_unix64()
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo

[Gilles Schintgen (shigi)]

I forgot to add a reference to vim's bugtracker on github:
https://github.com/vim/vim/issues/851
but as I said before, "libunity-gtk3-parser.so.0" seems to make it Ubuntu-specific.

[Apport retracing service (apport)]

StacktraceTop:
 unity_gtk_menu_section_get_item_attributes (model=<optimized out>, item_index=<optimized out>, attributes=0x7ffc3358c440) at ../../../lib/unity-gtk-menu-section.c:130
 g_menu_model_real_iterate_item_attributes () from /tmp/apport_sandbox_vzSPUV/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgio-2.0.so.0
 g_menu_exporter_menu_describe_item.isra () from /tmp/apport_sandbox_vzSPUV/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgio-2.0.so.0
 g_menu_exporter_menu_items_changed () from /tmp/apport_sandbox_vzSPUV/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libgio-2.0.so.0
 ffi_call_unix64 () from /tmp/apport_sandbox_vzSPUV/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libffi.so.6

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This crash looks similar to https://errors.ubuntu.com/problem/e2ebc01b52bd3bdce450fc67c4b2cdccb90d8dc3.

[David Barnett (mu-mind)]

So vim.gtk3 crashes consistently for all Ubuntu users on Unity desktop? Is anyone still working on a fix?

[David Barnett (mu-mind)]

Where can I see the fix? What package was it in?

[John A Meinel (jameinel)]

Given the Assignee: auto-github-vim-vim #851
I think what happened is that someone noticed this is also the bug in github. However, if you read the bug in github, they closed *that* bug because they said it was an Ubuntu bug. So I think there is no Fix Released, as upstream said it was an Ubuntu bug.

This is hitting me as well.

[John A Meinel (jameinel)]

I'm removing the direct remote watch as they said it is an Ubuntu bug.

[djp (djpnewton)]

workaround for me is to remove package vim-gtk3 and replace with vim-gtk

[Honghe Wu (honghe)]

@djp Thanks, it is the solution until this bug is fixed.

[David Barnett (mu-mind)]

Can you patch vim-gnome to point to vim-gtk instead of vim-gtk3 in the meantime?

I know many people who are used to installing "vim-gnome" to get the desktop integration and were baffled when their vim broke. It's not so obvious that several of the packages Ubuntu offered are just broken and you need to uninstall those and try again.

[dino99 (9d9)]

Looks like the real problem comes from GTK syntax error:
https://github.com/node-ffi/node-ffi/issues/324

Googling about ffi_call_unix64() find many apps crashing; so there is a need for code review with many apps using actual GTK.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.