Bug#532206: scilab gui does not work

[Oswald Berthold]

Package: scilab
Version: 5.1.1-6
Severity: important


starting scilab brings up a "console" window, which stays empty and nothing happening, no error.

machine:~# strace -p 16901
Process 16901 attached - interrupt to quit
futex(0xb807c8a4, FUTEX_WAIT_PRIVATE, 1, NULL

but i couldn't figure out what it's waiting for.

running -nw works, but the help system remains unusable.

i get identical behaviour with the version built from source (from scilab.org).

-- System Information:
Debian Release: squeeze/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.29-2-686 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages scilab depends on:
ii  scilab-bin                    5.1.1-6    Scientific software package for nu
ii  scilab-data                   5.1.1-6    Scientific software package for nu
ii  scilab-include                5.1.1-6    Scientific software package for nu

Versions of packages scilab recommends:
ii  scilab-doc                    5.1.1-6    Scientific software package for nu
ii  sivp                          0.5.0-2    Scilab Image and Video Processing 

Versions of packages scilab suggests:
ii  gcc                           4:4.3.3-8  The GNU C compiler
ii  gfortran                      4:4.3.3-8  The GNU Fortran 95 compiler

-- no debconf information