[Pkg-phototools-devel] Bug#557994: rawstudio: Segmentation fault when loading images

[Margarita Manterola]

Hi!

I wonder why this bug was downgraded from grave to important.  I'm
experiencing this bug as well, in squeeze, and it really does render
the program unusable.

Once you've opened certain directory, rawstudio won't ever open unless
you edit ~/.gconf/apps/rawstudio/%gconf.xml and remove the
last_working_directory entry.

I found this surprising message in the rawstudio page:

===

Troubleshooting:

If RAWstudio can not be started from the GUI menu anymore, then try
using the command line. Open a terminal and enter ‘rawstudio’. It
should be in your PATH. If this results in a ‘segmentation fault’
(which rarely happens) you should open rawstudio from the command line
again using root privileges. Then try to open the last directory you
used. If rawstudio suddenly closes, you have found the directory
that’s been giving problems. If not, try another directory. It should
be the last directory you used. Once you’ve found the ‘problem’
directory go to the command prompt, navigate to the ‘problem’
directory and recursively remove the directory ‘.rawstudio’ inside it
(rm -rf .rawstudio). After this, you should be able to start RAWstudio
from the GUI menu again like before.

===

I find a bit shocking, that instead of finding a bug and fixing it,
they propose a workaround, to something that seems to be evidently a
common problem.

However, this the solution proposed does not work in my case.  I found
the problematic directory, then deleted the .rawstudio dir with no
change in the symptoms. I had to edit the file mentioned earlier in
order to be able to keep using rawstudio.  Re-opening the problematic
dir caused the same trouble, so I realized that there was something in
that dir that made rawstudio segfault.

What I was able to trace was that there was a file that had a .cr2 (or
CR2) extension but JFIF file format:

$ file test2/_MG_64952.cr2
test2/_MG_64952.cr2: JPEG image data, JFIF standard 1.01

I don't know why this file go the wrong extension, but when that file
was present, I got a segfault trying to open the directory.  If I
removed or changed the name of the file to .jpg (or JPG), then it
worked alright.

So, apparently the problem is that rawstudio is trying to open the raw
files according to their extension, regardless of their file format.
And when a .cr2 file is not really a raw file, it segfaults.

I think this is indeed a grave bug, that should be fixed for stable,
because users with less patience and computer skills won't be able to
ever use rawstudio again, after it hitting one such file.

I'll try to investigate the code next.

-- 
Besos,
Marga