[MPlayer-users] Segfault core dump over innocently missing GLX

[Reimar Doeffinger]

Hello,
On Tue, Aug 07, 2007 at 02:20:16AM -0700, debcoder at trashymail.com wrote:
> Well, I tried to be helpful ... sorry to be so, ah, "worthless" ...
> anyway ... mp3blaster works.

I was only said that the bug report was worthless. While I found it
sounded a bit harsh, it unfortunately is also true. 

> To my mind this bug doesn't even need symbols.  Just don't crash when
> there's no GLX at startup.  MPlayer and VLC are not the only programs
> doing this.  It's one of those error checks that devs skip because it's
> so boring.

That definitely is not the reason. I removed the load glx stuff and it
does not crash, so your idea of the problem is at least incomplete.

> "mplayer -vo null" gives the same crash.

With -vo null MPlayer does not even call any X11 function, and certainly
no GL/GLX stuff.
The nVidia libGL might do some stuff simply due to being loaded, but
that is not an MPlayer problem at all (and maybe caused by a broken driver
installation, maybe mixing nVidia and Mesa code?).
here is nothing at all we can do about it except loading libGL
dynamically which is just not worth it.
You can compile an MPlayer with --disable-gl to work around it, if it is
related to OpenGL at all it will fix it.

> To Reimar Döffinger, the 1.0-96xx driver is not outdated.  For certain
> nVidia boards, this *is* the driver you're supposed to use, and is only
> a few months old.  Many Ubuntu people hit the same bug.  I merely
> confirmed it.

That may be, but IIRC you said it was the latest, which it is not. And
in MPlayer circles a few months old is considered quite old. Don't know
if I remembered to append "in MPlayer terms" to the outdated...

> "I doubt that is the same bug, unless it is a bug somewhere else in your
> system."  Hmm.  Well, programs that do check GLX status and return
> signals work.  Also, Google shows other nVidia users in years past hit
> similar problems with multiple audio-visual programs crashing over GL
> issues.

I am aware of a few such problems, but those I remember (admitting my
very selective memory) were caused by broken driver installations,
mostly where some of the binaries like libGL were overwritten with the
Mesa versions by updates.
Though this should not happen if the driver is an official package by
your distribution.

> Can't I just use the open source driver?  It's 3x slower than nVidia's
> for scrolling windows and such, so 3D is not the only issue.  But why
> they heck do I need 3D to watch 2D video anyhow...

Never noticed it really... And rest assured that MPlayer works fine
without working glx support for lots of people, including me.

> Well, do what you guys want with it.  I'm not going to argue.  Thanks to
> Robert Bradbury for good common sense.

Unfortunately there is nothing at all we can do with it so far, there is
not enough information, neither to reproduce it nor to track it down any
further (though that -vo null does not help is very useful information,
unfortunately it most likely means a reason outside MPlayer).

Greetings,
Reimar Doeffinger