Suddenly, NetworkManager crashes while starting...

[Laurent Therond <gnome1 mailsieve com>]

Hi,

So, NetworkManager has been working great for me for weeks in Ubuntu
Feisty Fawn and months in Ubuntu Dapper Drake.

Then, 3 days ago, it started to crash at start-up for no apparent reason.
I first thought the last kernel update was responsible, but booting a
prior kernel leads to the same problem.

Here is what I find in my logs:

Jun 10 12:11:45 Mario NetworkManager: <information>^Istarting...
Jun 10 12:11:45 Mario NetworkManager: <information>^Ieth1: Device is
fully-supported using driver 'ipw3945'.
Jun 10 12:11:45 Mario NetworkManager: <information>^Inm_device_init():
waiting for device's worker thread to start
Jun 10 12:11:45 Mario NetworkManager: <information>^Inm_device_init():
device's worker thread started, continuing.
Jun 10 12:11:45 Mario NetworkManager: <information>^INow managing
wireless (802.11) device 'eth1'.
Jun 10 12:11:45 Mario NetworkManager: <information>^IDeactivating device
eth1.
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario avahi-daemon[5104]: Found user 'avahi' (UID 105)
and group 'avahi' (GID 111).
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario avahi-daemon[5104]: Successfully dropped root
privileges.
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario avahi-daemon[5104]: avahi-daemon 0.6.17 starting up.
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario avahi-daemon[5104]: Successfully called chroot().
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario avahi-daemon[5104]: Successfully dropped remaining
capabilities.
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario avahi-daemon[5104]: No service found in
/etc/avahi/services.
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario avahi-daemon[5104]: Network interface enumeration
completed.
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario avahi-daemon[5104]: Registering HINFO record with
values 'I686'/'LINUX'.
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario avahi-daemon[5104]: Server startup complete. Host
name is Mario.local. Local service cookie is 3630529800.
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: <WARNING>^I nm_hal_deinit ():
libhal shutdown failed - Connection is closed
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: <WARNING>^I nm_signal_handler ():
Caught signal 11.  Generating backtrace...
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: <information>^ISuccessfully
reconnected to the system bus.
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: ******************* START
**********************************
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: (no debugging symbols found)
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: Using host libthread_db library
"/lib/tls/i686/cmov/libthread_db.so.1".
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: (no debugging symbols found)
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario last message repeated 4 times
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: [Thread debugging using
libthread_db enabled]
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: [New Thread -1212597808 (LWP 5084)]
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: [New Thread -1212601456 (LWP 5097)]
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: (no debugging symbols found)
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario last message repeated 12 times
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: 0xffffe410 in __kernel_vsyscall ()
Jun 10 12:11:46 Mario NetworkManager: ******************* END
**********************************

So, after NetworkManager dies with that segmentation fault, I have to
manually kill all other NetworkManager-related processes and restart
NetworkManager on the command line using:

sudo NetworkManager --no-daemon

If I repeat this procedure 2-3 times in a row, NetworkManager will
eventually start without crashing.

Can anybody help me get to the bottom of this mystery?

Tell me what information you need.

Thanks.

Laurent