How to find out what causes an application segmentation fault.

olegue · June 11, 2011, 3:38pm

Is there a general command which gives information what exactly causes a segmentation fault to an application.
Some application have not options like debug , launching the application from a command line returns “segmentation fault” as result. That does not give information what make the application to crush , especially if another application or a plug-ins messing up with the launched application.

jdmcdaniel3 · June 11, 2011, 3:55pm

I think that we need to take each program that will not run one at a time AND some programs simply do not work properly and should not be used in a distribution. I also have found that using the following command can allow GUI programs to load properly from a terminal session, perhaps reducing the number of errors you might see.

/usr/bin/dbus-launch program-name

If you have a specific application issue, then let us know the program you can not get to work. I would also add that in openSUSE we have many choices for all sorts of applications, but you got to ask how many ways do you really need to play a movie or music file? That just means if you have at least one application that works for you, don’t lose much sleep on another that does not work.

Thank You,

martin_helm · June 11, 2011, 5:12pm

If the application has no debug symbols it is of course difficult. One tool
you can have a look at to find more information about the crash is the
command “strace”, consult its man page.
But keep in mind that this can all be wasted effort, I 100% agree to the
comment from jdmcdaniel3.
Also review your set of repositories in use and which (crashing) program
comes from which repository and from which repositories its dependencies are
satisfied, you may have a set of incompatible repos.

olegue · June 18, 2011, 1:30pm

It is difficult to find any incompatibility caused by the repos as YAST soft managers says all dependencies are ok. For example I have installed kdenlive from Packman repo and if I login as a root it works, if I login as a user I receive a segmentation fault status on launching the same application. Then I deleted the .kde4 folder in my home directory and the application started successfully . On next login as user I received again Segmantation fault. So there is something with the config files in my home directory. So how I can find out what is the reason ?

martin_helm · June 18, 2011, 1:59pm

olegue wrote:

>
> It is difficult to find any incompatibility caused by the repos as YAST
> soft managers says all dependencies are ok. For example I have installed
> kdenlive from Packman repo and if I login as a root it works, if I login
> as a user I receive a segmentation fault status on launching the same
> application. Then I deleted the .kde4 folder in my home directory and
> the application started successfully . On next login as user I received
> again Segmantation fault. So there is something with the config files in
> my home directory. So how I can find out what is the reason ?
>
kdenlive is not really known for its stability but well known for random
crashes, it is still under heavy development, so it can be that you simply
ran into one of its bugs. I am not a expert for this application but that is
the status I know about it. So you have several options, build kdenlive
yourself from the sources and debug it with gdb (I do not know your
programming skills) or report the problem to the packamn developers (I guess
they will ask back for the additional info they need from you) or report the
error upstream.

What you can do now also is to post the output from


zypper lr -d

so that we can comment on the set of repositories you have, maybe someone
here knows then the problem.

olegue · July 5, 2011, 1:00pm

I managed to find the problem. Bespin causes some application to crush or some of their functions not to work correct. Switching to other style solves the problem. It is not very suitably frequent switching but i hope Bespin will clear those issues.
Thanks for the help.