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XScreenSaver
a handy guide for creating useful bug reports
--------
It's hard to imagine, but sometimes, xscreensaver has bugs. This
document gives some hints for isolating them; the more information
you can give me about the problem, the better the odds that I'll be
able to fix it. But, if you don't have time to go through these
steps, please report the bug anyway -- even vague bug reports can
be better than no bug report at all.
--------
STEP ZERO:
What are you doing here? Go read README, and then the man page.
STEP ZERO, PART TWO:
Do you have the most recent version? Go make sure.
http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/.
COMPILATION PROBLEMS:
If you get an error running the `configure' script, the first thing
you should try is deleting the `config.cache' file, and running again.
If that doesn't fix it, the information I'll need to see to make
sense of the problem is the following:
* everything printed to stderr/stdout when you first ran
./configure;
* the contents of the `config.log' file.
Make sure you blow away the config.cache file before regenerating
this info, or else the `config.log' file will be mostly empty/useless.
Experience seems to show that the most common configure problem is
that sites have gcc installed, but installed improperly. The
configure script will always try to use gcc in preference to another
compiler if gcc exists, so if gcc exists but is broken, it won't
work. Your options are:
* get someone to fix the gcc installation;
* rearrange your $PATH so that the broken gcc is not on it;
* or pass $CC in the environment, like so:
csh: setenv CC cc ; ./configure
sh: CC=cc ./configure
Before doing this, you'll need to nuke `config.cache'.
If you get errors about not being able to find Gtk, then perhaps
the problem is that you don't have some kind of ``development
option'' installed.
RUN-TIME PROBLEMS:
For runtime errors, it's important to keep in mind that there are
two parts to xscreensaver: there is the screensaver driver process
(the daemon that detects idleness, deals with locking, and launches
the demos); and there are the demos themselves (independent programs
that draw pretty pictures.)
* Compile with `make CFLAGS=-g' (so that if you get a core
dump, there will be debugging info in it.)
* What platform are you running on? What does the included
`./config.guess' shell script print?
* Is the problem in the driver (`xscreensaver'), the GUI
(`xscreensaver-demo'), or in the graphics hacks?
* If the problem is in the GUI, was it built using Gtk, Motif,
or Lesstif? Which version?
* If the problem is in one (or more) of the hacks, which ones?
If you're not sure, try running `xscreensaver-demo' to go
through the list of them and see which work and which don't.
* Does the problem occur when running that hack by hand, in
its own window (i.e., when started with no command-line args)?
* Does the problem occur when running that hack by hand, on
the root window (i.e., when started with the `-root' option)?
* IMPORTANT: What visual are you using? Send the output of
the `xdpyinfo' command.
* Does the problem go away if you give the program a different
`-visual' argument? (For example, `-visual pseudocolor' or
`-visual truecolor'.)
* IMPORTANT: What exactly goes wrong? No, I don't know what
you mean by "crash". Does it print an "X Error" and exit?
Does it dump core? Does it go into a loop?
* If it dumps core, what does the core file say? Run the
program under a debugger, and show me the stack trace.
To extract a stack trace from a core file with gdb, do this:
gdb ./the-program ./core
bt
To extract a stack trace from a core file with dbx, do this:
dbx ./the-program ./core
where
If the bottom few lines of the output don't include the functions
`main_loop()' and `main()', then something went wrong, and the
core file is bogus. If the lines it prints out contain only
question marks, then the core file is bogus. Are you sure the
core file came from that program? Did you compile with -g, as
explained above? If you don't compile with -g, the core file
won't have any information in it.
Never ever ever mail me (or anyone) a core file. They are huge,
and are only meaningful on the machine that generated them, with
the exact executable that generated them, neither of which anyone
but you has access to. Don't mail me a core file unless you're
also planning on mailing me your computer.
* If it gets an X error, where did it come from? Run
xscreensaver with the `-sync' command-line option. When `-sync'
is used, X errors will cause xscreensaver to dump a core file.
Look at the core file with a debugger and show me the stack trace,
as above: I need to know where in xscreensaver that X error came
from.
If the problem is with the xscreensaver process itself, or if you
can't figure out which demo is causing the problem, or if you can't
reproduce the problem in isolation, then you will need to turn on
and examine the debugging output of the driver process.
* Start `xscreensaver' with the command-line arguments
-verbose -no-capture
This will cause it to write a lot of debugging info to the stderr
of the xscreensaver process (the `-verbose' option turns on the
diagnostics; the `-no-capture' option prevents the data from being
displayed on the screensaver window as well.)
* If the problem is intermittent, you might want to capture the
log information to a file and examine it later. For example,
you could start it from your login script like this (csh syntax):
xscreensaver -sync -verbose -no-capture >>& saverlog &
* Hackers only: If you're feeling adventurous enough to run gdb
on the xscreensaver driver process itself, make sure you've
read the commentary at the top of xscreensaver.c.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/
Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
|