Ubuntu
firefox package

Firefox crashes (segmentation fault) only when in vnc

Asked by BrianH

I've set up vncserver using xinetd as described in
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=122402

I'm using the latest Edgy beta, just installed clean on a new computer.
The vncserver works well, except that firefox won't start. I know firefox works fine right from :0 display on the machine itself, I've used it a bunch. However, when I try to start it from my vnc session, it almost immediatly core dumps with a segmentation fault. I can sometimes see the firefox window start to display on the screen before it crashes. What could be the difference between the main terminal and vnc that would cause firefox to crash? I did set my vncserver to use -depth 24 and my resolution is much higher (1680x1050) than my :0 display (1024x768).

Before I realized that it was only happening in my vnc session, I tried re-installing firefox and also uninstalling it completely and then installing it again. That did nothing to help.

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Jeremy Visser (jeremy-visser) said : 		#1

I don't know the answer to your problem, but uninstalling and reinstalling Firefox probably won't help. Did you remember to reinstall the ubuntu-desktop package?

To have the "effect" of reinstalling, simply delete the .mozilla/firefox/ directory in your Home Folder. From a terminal:

rm -rf .mozilla/firefox/

Try downloading a copy of Firefox from www.mozillla.com, unzipping it in your desktop, run the starter script, and try reproducing the problem.

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BrianH (bahemr) said : 		#2

I haven't gotten anywhere with this problem. The only thing I know is that it isn't only firefox that crashes in VNC. Gimp won't run in my VNC window either. Actually if I type Gimp from a terminal, it will actually hang my entire machine and I have to go and reboot it by pressing the reset button. Keep in mind that all of these programs work flawlessly from the main console ":0". I think my problems may have something to do with my vnc settings, although I'm not sure which ones.

I've tried to run vnc "standalone", or not through xinetd service. I haven't been able to get it to start correctly. Does anyone have an example of their ~/.vnc/xstartup script? I may need to change something there. My installation is edgy 6.10 on amd64 and it was installed clean on a new machine, so there shouldn't be anything too unique about my system. If I can get my setup so that I can start a new vncserver from a terminal, I should be able to try different versions of vncserver to see if that makes a difference.

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BrianH (bahemr) said : 		#3

Could it be possible that using the nvidia binary driver causes these problems?

Perhaps certain programs want to use special features of the nvidia card and when I'm running in VNC, they aren't available and the program crashes?

If I can figure out how to change back to a "generic" video driver I'll test out this theory.

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