Calibre crashing in Ubuntu 12.04

economix · 05-08-2012, 05:03 AM

A couple of weeks ago I upgraded my Ubuntu install to the latest 12.04 64 bit. Since then I have been having problems with Calibre crashing when doing a bulk edit of metadata e.g. after adding 20 books, selecting all and then doing an "Add cover from ebook files". It has also occured when adding a large pdf book. I previously had no problems with these tasks.
The error message that shows in the terminal is "Segmentation fault (core dumped)"
When Calibre is restarted I can then repeat whatever task caused it to crash and it will complete properly.
Calibre was version .8.49 binary install when the problem first occured and has continued with .8.50.
I have also noticed that after restarting, any changes to settings/preferences made during the session when it crashes will have reverted to the previous state.
Any thoughts on what may be causing this?

kovidgoyal · 05-08-2012, 07:59 AM

Generally speaking, the culprits are likely to be graphics card related. So turn off unity/graphics acceleration. But really, it could be almost anything.

kacir · 05-28-2012, 08:00 AM

I have got similar problem. I use Mint Linux. This version - Linux Mint 13, Maya, with Cinnamon, 32bit version - is based on Ubuntu 12.04
www.linuxmint.com

Sometimes, the whole computer just freezes when I edit metadata in the main list of books. I drag and drop a few files to the Calibre and I want to change some book title or author name. So I double-click the field and the computer seizes up.
The only thing I can do is Ctrl-Alt-F1 combo and get to the text console. I have tried to kill Calibre process by 'killall calibre' but it doesn't help. - The Calibre is killed, the computer, or X.org gui, stays locked up with frozen Calibre screen on it.
This happens relatively rarely and the bug isn't reproducible. So when I restart the computer I can start Calibre and edit the metadata where it happened and everything works. Later, after some 20 minutes or perhaps 10 hours the computer is locked up again.

At this moment I can't even say for sure this is caused by Calibre, or by combination of Gnome 3 (Grrrrrrrrrrrr!!! PHEW!!!), Firefox (with LOTS of tabs opened), Calibre, QT libraries, and whatever else (Cinnamon?). All I can say that so far, every time this happened I was editing metadata in Calibre. Recently I was using Calibre quite a lot - putting some disorganized files into order.

What can I do to make a better bug report?
How do I ask Calibre from text console whether it is still alive?
At this moment I can't even say whether it is a screen lock-up, or X-org glitch, or my dear Gnome 3 (Phew!!!) or something else. Last time this happened, I was downloading something in the background and the download finished - I looked at the downloaded file as it grew, and eventually downloaded completely, in text console (through Ctrl-Alt-F1).
The restart of window manager by Alt+F2 r doesn't work.

kovidgoyal · 05-28-2012, 08:12 AM

calibre runs user mode code, i.e. it makes no kernel calls, therefore, it cannot freeze your entire computer. The worst that a bug in calibre can do is cause calibre itself to crash. If your entire computer is freezing, the bug lies elsewhere. As for your issues, just google: ubuntu 12.04 freezing and you will find this problem is affecting thousands of people most of whom dont run calibre.

For example: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...rg/+bug/993187

DiapDealer · 05-28-2012, 08:54 AM

If your MB has integrated Nvidia graphics and you're using the non-free Nvidia drivers, the first thing to try is to downgrade that video driver to a previous version.

kacir · 05-28-2012, 09:22 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

If your entire computer is freezing, the bug lies elsewhere. As for your issues, just google: ubuntu 12.04 freezing and you will find this problem is affecting thousands of people most of whom dont run calibre.

I didn't say that the entire computer is frozen, I described in detail that I can switch to a virtual text console[s] using Ctrl+Alt+F1 ... Ctrl+Alt+F7.
And I clearly stated that only X.org display was frozen.

I am aware that Ubuntu 12.04 had some ... aehm ... problems regarding the user interface. I had some other freezes that could be resolved by a restart of window manager (or was it Cinnamon?) through Alt+F2 r <Enter>

I was asking how to write a better report, because more and more Calibre users will start switching to distros based on the unfortunate 12.04. And 12.04 is LTS, so it will be with us for a loooong time. Sigh ...

kovidgoyal · 05-28-2012, 10:18 AM

The same logic applies to X.org as applies to the kernel, because calibre (and all other X clients) talk to the X server via a protocol, or in other words, calibre executes no code whatsoever in the X server, and has no access whatsoever to its memory (calibre does not use hardware acceleration). X server freezes are bugs in the X server (or more likely the graphics drivers or the compositor).

There is no better bug report to be had, this is not a problem that can be fixed at the level of calibre. If I were you, I'd just switch to a sane window manager till the bugs are ironed out of gnome 3/unity/whatever.

If you want to help track down the bugs in X/gnome3/unity, you'll need to ask in one of their forums.

kacir · 05-28-2012, 12:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

If I were you, I'd just switch to a sane window manager till the bugs are ironed out of gnome 3/unity/whatever.

Thank you for your time.

What you described is exactly what I did. I went back to using the older version of Mint Linux that works perfectly
... but bugs won't get ironed out until brave users start testing the new system and reporting meaningful bug reports ;-)

I have one central /home partition and several primary partitions for installing OS. I mount my /home partition on every system I use or test, so I always have access to my data. On each system I use different login name with the same UID number, so I can access my home directories, but my configuration data do not get mixed up. On one of primary partitions I have Mint Linux 11 in perfect working condition (that I plan to use for foreseeable future as my main working system and fallback system) and I have installed the new system to another primary partition. This way I can test the new stuff (and try to report bugs) before switching over.

I consider myself an advanced user so I thought I might try to help with tracking this issue.

kovidgoyal · 05-28-2012, 02:14 PM

Well if you want to debug stuff like X you will have to compile it from source with debug symbols, enable core dumping and generate backtraces with gdb. There are plenty of guides online that tell you how to do that.

theducks · 05-28-2012, 02:38 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

Well if you want to debug stuff like X you will have to compile it from source with debug symbols, enable core dumping and generate backtraces with gdb. There are plenty of guides online that tell you how to do that.

There is something strange going on with the 12.04 screen saver code.

When it gets ready to time out and Lock, My dual-dead lost the second head and the first switched to low-res.
Setting the time to Never seemed to allow me to walk away with no ill effects.
I hate Unity

kovidgoyal · 05-28-2012, 03:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

I hate Unity

I am a long time KDE user, so I avoided the whole current GNOME/Unity mess. We KDE guys had ours a couple of years ago with KDE 4.0, fortunately, KDE has stabilized nicely now.

gbm · 05-28-2012, 09:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by theducks

There is something strange going on with the 12.04 screen saver code.

When it gets ready to time out and Lock, My dual-dead lost the second head and the first switched to low-res.
Setting the time to Never seemed to allow me to walk away with no ill effects.
I hate Unity

That is why I am still using 11.04, and do not use the POC unity gui

bernie

P.S. Do you still have the option to use the classic Ubunta GUI in 12.04?

jgaiser · 05-28-2012, 09:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gbm

That is why I am still using 11.04, and do not use the POC unity gui

Actually if you still use 10.04, you don't even need to worry about the POS unity gui...

Don't know where I'm going from there once LTS is done in 2013.

afv011 · 05-28-2012, 11:48 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by gbm

That is why I am still using 11.04, and do not use the POC unity gui

bernie

P.S. Do you still have the option to use the classic Ubunta GUI in 12.04?

No, 12.04 doesn't give you the option at the login screen to choose Unity or Gnome.

gbm · 05-29-2012, 12:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by afv011

No, 12.04 doesn't give you the option at the login screen to choose Unity or Gnome.

Unity makes me think that Windows 3.0 was not all that bad.

bernie

05-08-2012, 05:03 AM	#1
economix Member Posts: 12 Karma: 10 Join Date: Aug 2009 Location: Australia Device: Sony PRS-505; PRS-300; Kindle 3	Calibre crashing in Ubuntu 12.04 A couple of weeks ago I upgraded my Ubuntu install to the latest 12.04 64 bit. Since then I have been having problems with Calibre crashing when doing a bulk edit of metadata e.g. after adding 20 books, selecting all and then doing an "Add cover from ebook files". It has also occured when adding a large pdf book. I previously had no problems with these tasks. The error message that shows in the terminal is "Segmentation fault (core dumped)" When Calibre is restarted I can then repeat whatever task caused it to crash and it will complete properly. Calibre was version .8.49 binary install when the problem first occured and has continued with .8.50. I have also noticed that after restarting, any changes to settings/preferences made during the session when it crashes will have reverted to the previous state. Any thoughts on what may be causing this?

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05-08-2012, 07:59 AM	#2
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,850 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Generally speaking, the culprits are likely to be graphics card related. So turn off unity/graphics acceleration. But really, it could be almost anything.

05-28-2012, 08:00 AM	#3
kacir Wizard Posts: 3,450 Karma: 10484861 Join Date: May 2006 Device: PocketBook 360, before it was Sony Reader, cassiopeia A-20	I have got similar problem. I use Mint Linux. This version - Linux Mint 13, Maya, with Cinnamon, 32bit version - is based on Ubuntu 12.04 www.linuxmint.com Sometimes, the whole computer just freezes when I edit metadata in the main list of books. I drag and drop a few files to the Calibre and I want to change some book title or author name. So I double-click the field and the computer seizes up. The only thing I can do is Ctrl-Alt-F1 combo and get to the text console. I have tried to kill Calibre process by 'killall calibre' but it doesn't help. - The Calibre is killed, the computer, or X.org gui, stays locked up with frozen Calibre screen on it. This happens relatively rarely and the bug isn't reproducible. So when I restart the computer I can start Calibre and edit the metadata where it happened and everything works. Later, after some 20 minutes or perhaps 10 hours the computer is locked up again. At this moment I can't even say for sure this is caused by Calibre, or by combination of Gnome 3 (Grrrrrrrrrrrr!!! PHEW!!!), Firefox (with LOTS of tabs opened), Calibre, QT libraries, and whatever else (Cinnamon?). All I can say that so far, every time this happened I was editing metadata in Calibre. Recently I was using Calibre quite a lot - putting some disorganized files into order. What can I do to make a better bug report? How do I ask Calibre from text console whether it is still alive? At this moment I can't even say whether it is a screen lock-up, or X-org glitch, or my dear Gnome 3 (Phew!!!) or something else. Last time this happened, I was downloading something in the background and the download finished - I looked at the downloaded file as it grew, and eventually downloaded completely, in text console (through Ctrl-Alt-F1). The restart of window manager by Alt+F2 r doesn't work.

05-28-2012, 08:12 AM	#4
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,850 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	calibre runs user mode code, i.e. it makes no kernel calls, therefore, it cannot freeze your entire computer. The worst that a bug in calibre can do is cause calibre itself to crash. If your entire computer is freezing, the bug lies elsewhere. As for your issues, just google: ubuntu 12.04 freezing and you will find this problem is affecting thousands of people most of whom dont run calibre. For example: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...rg/+bug/993187

05-28-2012, 08:54 AM	#5
DiapDealer Grand Sorcerer Posts: 27,547 Karma: 193191846 Join Date: Jan 2010 Device: Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD	If your MB has integrated Nvidia graphics and you're using the non-free Nvidia drivers, the first thing to try is to downgrade that video driver to a previous version.

05-28-2012, 10:18 AM	#7
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,850 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	The same logic applies to X.org as applies to the kernel, because calibre (and all other X clients) talk to the X server via a protocol, or in other words, calibre executes no code whatsoever in the X server, and has no access whatsoever to its memory (calibre does not use hardware acceleration). X server freezes are bugs in the X server (or more likely the graphics drivers or the compositor). There is no better bug report to be had, this is not a problem that can be fixed at the level of calibre. If I were you, I'd just switch to a sane window manager till the bugs are ironed out of gnome 3/unity/whatever. If you want to help track down the bugs in X/gnome3/unity, you'll need to ask in one of their forums.

05-28-2012, 02:14 PM	#9
kovidgoyal creator of calibre Posts: 43,850 Karma: 22666666 Join Date: Oct 2006 Location: Mumbai, India Device: Various	Well if you want to debug stuff like X you will have to compile it from source with debug symbols, enable core dumping and generate backtraces with gdb. There are plenty of guides online that tell you how to do that.

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