Hello,

This is an advanced problem from an advanced user. :-)

I recently rsync:ed a desktop system to a laptop. I also upgraded the kernel on the laptop so all hardware was supported. After this, many programs that works on the desktop segfault at launchtime on the laptop.

The kernel upgrade was from 2.6.11.5 to 2.6.23-rc6. Some affected program are:
- xmms
- mplayer
- firefox

Most (all) basic software (shells, system processes, daemons etc work just fine).

It should be mentioned that:
- Opera crashes too, unless I use a static version.
- The X server has been upgraded in order to get the flat panel to work.
- I rule out X since:
a) The same versions of the affected software works using X remote from the desktop to laptop.
b) mplayer does not (necessarily) use X, for instance when playing mp3s.

Obeservations:
- Since a static version of Opera works, but not the dynamic, it suggests a library problem. But still all system libraries are the same?
- All programs that crash are presumably multi-threaded. Could it be that I have forgotten some kernel option that (say) libthread expects? Cannot find anything obvious in the kernel config.
- gdb stack trace of both xmms and mplayer reveal a crash in memset (NULL ptr arg). No caller stack frame exist. Firefox crashes in __pthread_mutex_init called from talkback.so (the crash reporting system crashes?).

The C library is glibc-2.3.90. I tried upgrading it to glibc-2.6.1 (in a chroot) but almost all binaries on the system segfault with it (including bash, tcsh works though).

As you can imagine, I have spent a few days with this and could use some fresh ideas. Anyone?

Thank you for your time,

//Tapani

You could try running the programs with problems under strace. That will show you what libraries are loading and what syscalls are being executed up until the program crashes.

See man strace.

Also, since you upgraded X, is it possible that the affected programs were linked against older X libraries?

As an you're an advanced user, I take it you realise that the 'rc' in 2.6.23-rc6 stands for 'release candidate' ie effectively beta software?

Thanks, I think I know why now.

chrism01,

yes I was perfectly aware of that. However a beta kernel is nothing compared to all the alpha closed source drivers already used...


zhangmaike,

thank you! Wasn't aware of strace! It revealed that the crashes occured just after loading libnvidia-tls.so.1
Once I rename that file, at least xmms starts working (somehow it launches without it and just warns that it is missing).
As I said, alpha quality drivers...

//Tapani