X Crashing on playing a video

[shailesh_paranjpe]

I have 64 bit precise on HP Pavilion DV6 Laptop. I had earlier installed Beta updates from kubuntu beta ppa backports and due to some problems, downgraded the system back to original precise installation. Post this, I installed the precise updates from kubuntu (Stable) ppa. I have AMD display driver (fglrx) installed from repositories.

Ever since I downgraded from beta to original stable kubuntu deesktop, I have the following problem: When ever I try to run a video using VLC or Dragon Player, X crashes immediately and takes me to login screen. The error is 100% reproducible and the display just before getting login screen briefly shows segmentation fault (something like this). Due to this, I can't play videos.

Not sure if it is a problem with S/W or H/W, may be display driver. But the X server otherwise works absolutely fine, when not playing any video. Only on starting a video, it crashes. Incidentally, it doesnt crash while running a flash file from something like youtube.

Incidentally, I noticed that the muon package manager shows some strange information about some applications, may be related to improper downgrading of the system or may be due to fact that I have now applied kubunut stable updates from stable ppa, I dont know.

1. Kernel Version: Muon shows: 3.2.0.25.27 (Now), 3.2.0.12.12 (ubuntu.mirron.xxx)
2. X-server-Xorg-Core: Muon shows: 2.1.11.4-0ubuntu10.2 (now), 2.1.11.3-0ubuntu10 (ubuntu.mirror.xxx)
3. Xserver-xorg: 1:7.6+12ubuntu1 (now), 1:7.6+10ubuntu1 (ubuntu.mirror.xxx)

Is what I mentioned above related to the problem of crashing. If not, what could be the other reason? Please help...

Thanks

[shailesh_paranjpe]

Any takes on this... any help from someone knowing in the issue will be really useful.... thanks

[jlittle]

I have ... on HP Pavilion DV6 Laptop.... Any takes on this...

I had one of those... appalling hardware:shock:. Multiple failures beginning just out of warranty, overheated like crazy, then it died altogether.
In particular, applications that were demanding to the graphics caused it to overheat. My son, a gamer, had some joy with that by placing it hanging over the edge of a table, so that air flow from one of the vents was unimpeded.

Regards, and luck, John Little

[SteveRiley]

I had one of those... appalling hardware:shock:. Multiple failures beginning just out of warranty, overheated like crazy, then it died altogether.

I repaired my wife's DV6 by following a procedure to "reflow" the solder on the GPU. If you want to try it, you should feel reasonably comfortable with the notion of completely disassembling a laptop. But the repair lasted only a month! I really don't want to be bothered with a two-hour tear-down every 30 days, so I tossed that junker laptop in the trash and replaced it with a Lenovo. HP has become the Whirlpool of computers.

[sumski]

What's your fglrx version? There was a bug exactly like the one you described, but it's fixed with latest version:

fglrx-installer (2:8.960-0ubuntu1) precise; urgency=low    
  * New upstream release:     
  - Fix issue with XVideo in the new xserver (LP: #921384). 
  -- Alberto Milone <alberto.milone@canonical.com>  Thu, 22 Mar 2012 16:01:03 +0100

Try changing output from XVideo to gl

[shailesh_paranjpe]

Thanks Steve Riley and sumski.

My laptop has been working excellent with no video related issues for 1.5 years on various Kubuntu versions before this problem arose. This really occurred when I upgraded from KDE stable version to KDE Beta and had to downgrade back to stable. Therefore, I think this may not be an issue with Hard solder or something like a card issue.

My version of fglrx shows: fglrx-installer 2:8.911-0ubuntu2. This seems to be totally different from what you have mentioned. Now, I dont know 2:8.960-0ubuntu1 is latest or 2:8.9110ubuntu2 is the latest. You mentioned your version as latest, but, trying "sudo apt-get update" does not show any updated version availablein my kubuntu. What is the way out?
Thanks again...

[shailesh_paranjpe]

Hello sumski again,
I tried the other option you suggested, i.e. changing the output to open GL GLX video output. That seems to have worked, so far no crashing, but display is somewhat flickering. I am going to give it a try to other options like X11 video output (XCB) as well.
Thanks again, your solution seems to be working well...

[sumski]

What's your /etc/apt/sources.list ?

[shailesh_paranjpe]

Here goes the "Uncommented" text part of the sources.list file:
Quote:
deb http://ubuntu.mirror.netelligent.ca/ubuntu/ precise main universe restricted multiverse
deb-src http://ubuntu.mirror.netelligent.ca/ubuntu/ precise main universe restricted multiverse #Added by software-properties
deb http://ubuntu.mirror.netelligent.ca/ubuntu/ precise-security universe main multiverse restricted
deb-src http://ubuntu.mirror.netelligent.ca/ubuntu/ precise-security universe main multiverse restricted #Added by software-properties
deb http://ubuntu.mirror.netelligent.ca/ubuntu/ precise-updates universe main multiverse restricted
deb-src http://ubuntu.mirror.netelligent.ca/ubuntu/ precise-updates universe main multiverse restricted #Added by software-properties
Unquote
Thanks....

[sumski]

Looking at the mirror contents, it seems it's severely outdated, eg. it contains kate at ver. 4.8.0, while precise-updates has 4.8.3.
Change your mirror, you have a lot of updates waiting

[shailesh_paranjpe]

Looking at the mirror contents, it seems it's severely outdated, eg. it contains kate at ver. 4.8.0, while precise-updates has 4.8.3.
Change your mirror, you have a lot of updates waiting

Thanks sumski,
That worked like a gem. Changing the mirror to Ubuntu Main Server installed a large no. of updates and also fixed the X crashing problem. I changed the video output from VLC back to default and VLC now plays without crashing the X server. Of course, the Dragon Player still does not work properly (Although it doesnt crash the X server) but it is generally the problem of dragon player itself which has been buggy since ages. It doesnt matter any way because my default player is VLC which plays all the videos in the world.

I wasnt aware that mirrors can lag so much behind the main releases, I had just chosen that mirror since it used to give me largest download speed. The Downloads from Main Servers and Server from US used to be pathetically slow, perpetually, so that was my choice. Now I will change it to default.

A trillion thanks to sumski for fixing my problem with video. We can close this thread now.
Kubuntu Rocks.... and so does Kubuntu Forums.........