Re: mc 4.5.30 crashes X session

[jg pa dec com (Jim Gettys)]

Reading through the continuation of the thread...  Still sounds like an 
X server, since Sri reports that it happens independently of Gnome-session 
running... (what in the world does gnome-session do, anyway? does it send 
signals to the X server?  send KillClient requests?)....  I'd go hunting 
for core files, and see what has crashed recently.  The X server itself 
may be too big to core dump, depending what your system core dump limit 
is set to.

The fact that the core dump of the application running got an XIOError
indicates strongly that it is a server failure rather than anything
that gnome might do.  This is the X library reporting that the connection
to the X server failed (e.g. the server exited, or the network connection
timed out).

So, what you do, is go see if a core file was generated for the X server.

Presuming you find a core file for the X server itself, then you send
a stack trace to the XFree86 folks.

If you find no core file for the X server itself, you can start up
X manually under a debugger, and then provoke the bug to cause the server
to die, and get the stack trace.

Usually, the stack trace will give a good idea of what is going on
to trigger the bug; memory trashing bugs are the general exception to
this rule.  The device independent part of the server is VERY well
debugged, and unlikely to be the culprit.
			- Jim



--
Jim Gettys
Industry Standards and Consortia
Compaq Computer Corporation
Visting Scientist, World Wide Web Consortium, M.I.T.
http://www.w3.org/People/Gettys/
jg@w3.org, jg@pa.dec.com