Bug#893488: gnome-shell 3.28 crashes on Radeon R9: Failed to create texture 2d due to size/format constraints

[Simon McVittie]

On Sat, 31 Mar 2018 at 01:04:04 +0200, Matteo Settenvini wrote:
> I finally got round to re-install the packages that are crashing for me (by the
> way, this seem to happen roughly the same on another computer of mine, which
> has a nVidia graphics card).

nVidia with the proprietary drivers from nvidia-graphics-drivers, or nVidia
with the open-source "Nouveau" driver from Mesa? (They have different bugs,
and Nouveau in particular has quite a lot in common with the amdgpu driver
that you're presumably using on the Radeon.)

> Thread 1 (Thread 0x7f2be1603ac0 (LWP 21374)):
> #0  0x00007f2be0776509 in magazine_chain_pop_head (magazine_chunks=<optimized
> out>) at ../../../../glib/gslice.c:539
> #1  0x00007f2be0776509 in thread_memory_magazine1_alloc (tmem=<optimized out>,
> ix=0) at ../../../../glib/gslice.c:842
> #2  0x00007f2be0776509 in g_slice_alloc (mem_size=mem_size at entry=12) at ../..
> /../../glib/gslice.c:1016
> #3  0x00007f2be0776b29 in g_slice_alloc0 (mem_size=mem_size at entry=12) at ../..
> /../../glib/gslice.c:1051
> #4  0x00007f2be10360c7 in shell_generic_container_get_preferred_width (actor=
> 0x565161957920 [ShellGenericContainer], for_height=<optimized out>, min_width_p
> =0x7ffebc4a4fa0, natural_width_p=0x7ffebc4a4fa4) at ../src/shell-generic-
> container.c:94
> #5  0x00007f2bdf3e4f92 in clutter_actor_get_preferred_width (self=
> 0x565161957920 [ShellGenericContainer], for_height=27, min_width_p=
> 0x7ffebc4a5010, natural_width_p=0x7ffebc4a5014) at clutter-actor.c:9556

Unfortunately, this looks like heap corruption, so the damage was probably
done earlier (perhaps via a double-free, or by calling g_free() on memory
that came from g_slice_alloc()).

You might get a better backtrace from running gnome-shell with either
G_SLICE=always-malloc MALLOC_CHECK_=2, or G_SLICE=debug-blocks, for
instance by moving /usr/bin/gnome-shell to /usr/bin/gnome-shell.real
and replacing it with a script like:

#!/bin/sh
export G_SLICE=always-malloc
export MALLOC_CHECK_=2
exec /usr/bin/gnome-shell.real "$@"

or

#!/bin/sh
export G_SLICE=debug-blocks
exec /usr/bin/gnome-shell.real "$@"

Regards,
    smcv