Bug#684999: ekiga: segfault on exit from video call

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton]

On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 6:22 PM, Paul Menzel <pm.debian at googlemail.com> wrote:
> Am Sonntag, den 09.09.2012, 16:53 +0100 schrieb Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton:
>> On Sun, Sep 9, 2012 at 2:25 PM, Paul Menzel <pm.debian at googlemail.com> wrote:
>> > forwarded 684999 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=683668
>> > tags 684999 upstream
>> > quit
>
>> > Am Mittwoch, den 15.08.2012, 17:13 +0100 schrieb lkcl:
>> >> Package: ekiga
>> >> Version: 3.2.7-5+b1
>> >> Severity: important
>> >
>> > thank you for taking the time to report this error to the Debian BTS.
>> >
>> >> ======= Backtrace: =========
>> >> /lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libc.so.6(+0x72606)[0x7f78e839b606]
>> >> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavutil.so.51(av_freep+0xc)[0x7f78d711433c]
>> >> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavutil.so.51(av_opt_free+0x3c)[0x7f78d7114a7c]
>> >> /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libavcodec.so.53(avcodec_close+0xf5)[0x7f78d738bd9d]
>> >> /usr/lib/opal-3.10.4/codecs/video/mpeg4_ffmpeg_ptplugin.so(_ZN13FFMPEGLibrary12AvcodecCloseEP14AVCodecContext+0x38)[0x7f78d8609e50]
>
> I am sorry, I forgot to ask, if this was just a one time occurrence or
> if you hit this problem reliably.

 pretty much all the time.

>> > I am no expert, but this looks like the segmentation fault happens in
>> > `libavutil.so.51` or `libc.so.6`.
>>
>>  yeahh... but... ah i've learned that actually there's a severe
>> problem with opal 3.10 that is *not* present with the latest svn of
>> opal.
>
> Interesting! Could you point me to the source of your information
> please?

 it's empirical observation.  "learned" is perhaps too strong a word.
but after compiling half a dozen applications and servers in a
desperately-widening search for at least... *some* stable free
software voip conferencing client-server combination, i've kinda
covered most of the field here :)

 the only client-server combination that offered any level of
stability was opalgw + openphone from the latest svn direct out of the
opal repository.  *every* single release of opal prior to that - and i
checked them all, all the way back i think it was to opal 3.8 - every
minor and major release - was unstable and crashed in some way.

>> i have tried compiling ekiga straight from latest svn source code but
>> it's not having any of it.
>
> I am sorry. I do not understand that sentence. Could you please clarify
> it? Git is used for Ekiga now [1]. What does it not have? libopal should
> be an external library, should not it?

 yes it is.  i compiled the latest ekiga svn with the latest libopal
and there were compile-time incompatibilities (in the ekiga source
code) that stopped me from proceeding.

>> > Could you please paste the output of the following command.
>> >
>> >     $ dpkg -l libavcodec53 libavutil51 libc6
>>
>> lkcl at MacbookXP:~/src/rhombus/allwinner_a10$ dpkg -l libavcodec53
>> libavutil51 libc6
>> Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
>> | Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
>> |/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
>> ||/ Name           Version        Description
>> +++-==============-==============-============================================
>> ii  libavcodec53   7:0.10.3-dmo1  Library to encode decode multimedia streams
>> ii  libavutil51    7:0.11.1-dmo4  FFmpeg avutil library - runtime files
>> ii  libc6          2.13-21        Embedded GNU C Library: Shared libraries
>
> Hmm, so you are using the packages from deb-multimedia.org [1]. If these
> packages were updated maybe the bug you reported was fixed by an update.

 ... mmm... if i had even a little bit more space on my system, and
bandwidth even 5x higher than our current 256mbits/sec limit, i'd be
tempted to try that.

> Please look at `/usr/share/doc/libavutil51/changelog.Debian.gz` and see
> if it has changed from August 15th.

ffmpeg-dmo (7:0.11.1-dmo4) unstable; urgency=low

  * Build with --enable-libcdio, --enable-gnutls, --enable-frei0r,
    --enable-openssl and --enable-libass and add libcdio-paranoia-dev,
    libgnutls-dev, libssl-dev, libass-dev and frei0r-plugins-dev to
    Build-Depends.

 -- Christian Marillat <marillat at deb-multimedia.org>  Tue, 31 Jul 2012
18:01:28 +0200


> As a side not, most of these packages should be in Debian now [3][4].

 ... including H.264?  the 3 codecs i've been trying out are H.261,
H.263 (and variants) and H.264.  in a desperate attempt to find ....
at least _one_ bloody codec that works, i have to admit :)

> I will add the Opal folks to the CC field. Maybe they can share their
> view on this issue. Maybe it is possible to release 3.10.5 with all
> these fixes added to it.

 i tried 3.10.5 as well.  it really didn't work.  it really is only
3.11alpha2 that had *any* level of success or stability.

 if i recall correctly (it was a week ago) 3.10.5 "worked" i.e. didn't
crash when used in opalmcu and openphone, but both
openphone/opal3.10.5 and ekiga/opal3.10.4 (which works other than the
crash at the end) wouldn't do two-way video.  something like that.
the amount of testing i've had to do, to be honest i was getting numb.
 oh look, it's another crash: let's try yet _another_ combination :)

[OT] - btw i'm really surprised at how sparse the number of H323
video-capable clients for gnu/linux there are.  ekiga really *is*
quite literally the only option... or so i thought.  can i recommend
that openphone (from samples/openphone in the opal releases) be
independently packaged up and released?  also the opalmcu and the
opalgw samples: they're pretty basic, but actually functional.

l.