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VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

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extraspecialbitter
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VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#1 Post by extraspecialbitter »

I'm running Bunsen Labs' "Hydrogen", based on Debian 8.2, and I've noticed intermittent failures of VLC. They're always accompanied by a segmentation fault when I think to run "dmesg" immediately afterward. Here is an example:

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[5357898.199757] vlc[7758]: segfault at 100000000 ip 00007fb4e04cc13a sp 00007fb4feafc980 error 4 in i965_dri.so[7fb4e01ce000+51e000]
The installed version is 2.2.8. The issue usually clears after a reboot, but I hate to resort to Windows-like tactics. Is there any other remediation I should try?

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#2 Post by Bulkley »

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 ps ax
Then kill whichever PID relates to VLC.

Run VLC from a terminal so that you can see what the errors are. Then post errors in your favourite search engine and see what comes up. Also, look for bug reports.

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#3 Post by stevepusser »

Smells like deb-multimedia and its well-known problems to me, since Jessie has 2.2.7 and DMO has 2.2.8 for Jessie. What does

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apt-cache policy vlc
report?
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debiman
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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#4 Post by debiman »

haha, any other distro and people would be screaming "Not Debian" already!

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#5 Post by Wheelerof4te »

^I've noticed it too. They have their own forum, no?

Anyway, reinstall VLC from native repos. Don't try to build from dubious sources. Don't run VLC snaps or flatpacks.

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#6 Post by extraspecialbitter »

stevepusser wrote:Smells like deb-multimedia and its well-known problems to me, since Jessie has 2.2.7 and DMO has 2.2.8 for Jessie. What does

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apt-cache policy vlc
report?
Here is the result from the command line:

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pablo@eltriunfo=> apt-cache policy vlc
vlc:
  Installed: 1:2.2.8-dmo1+deb8u1
  Candidate: 1:2.2.8-dmo1+deb8u1
  Version table:
 *** 1:2.2.8-dmo1+deb8u1 0
        500 http://www.deb-multimedia.org/ jessie/main amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.2.7-1~deb8u1 0
        500 http://debian.csail.mit.edu/debian/ jessie/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates/main amd64 Packages
From this I can infer that I'm installing the DMO version of vlc instead of the Debian Jesse version. I've added DMO for applications like banshee, easytag, audacity, asunder, etc., but wonder if it's causing me more problems than it's solving.
Last edited by extraspecialbitter on 2018-02-25 15:57, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#7 Post by extraspecialbitter »

Bulkley wrote:

Code: Select all

 ps ax
Then kill whichever PID relates to VLC.

Run VLC from a terminal so that you can see what the errors are. Then post errors in your favourite search engine and see what comes up. Also, look for bug reports.
Running VLC from the command line brings up the application without errors, but when I attempt to play music, a movie clip or a live stream, the following error appears and the app aborts.

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pablo@eltriunfo=> vlc
VLC media player 2.2.8 Weatherwax (revision 2.2.7-14-g3cc1d8cba9)
[00000000012a1118] core libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[00007ffa98001108] http access: Raw-audio server found, mp3 demuxer selected
[00007ffa8c005da8] mpgatofixed32 audio converter error: libmad error: bad main_data_begin pointer
Segmentation fault

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#8 Post by extraspecialbitter »

Here is the contents of my /etc/apt/sources.list file:

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deb http://debian.csail.mit.edu/debian/ jessie main non-free contrib
#deb-src http://debian.csail.mit.edu/debian/ jessie main non-free contrib

deb http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://security.debian.org/ jessie/updates main contrib non-free

# jessie-updates, previously known as 'volatile'
deb http://debian.csail.mit.edu/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib non-free
#deb-src http://debian.csail.mit.edu/debian/ jessie-updates main contrib non-free

# Multimedia repository
deb http://www.deb-multimedia.org jessie main non-free

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#9 Post by bw123 »


I've added DMO for applications like banshee, easytag, audacity, asunder, etc.,
They are all in the debian repository, so that isn't necessary.
resigned by AI ChatGPT

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#10 Post by Wheelerof4te »

extraspecialbitter wrote:I've added DMO for applications like banshee, easytag, audacity, asunder, etc., but wonder if it's causing me more problems than it's solving.
That repo is definently causing you problems. It is not needed since Jessie, we are at Stretch now and heading towards Buster. Remove VLC, remove the DMD repo and reinstall VLC from official repo.
EDIT: Sorry for the echo bw123, didn't see the post above before this post.

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#11 Post by extraspecialbitter »

Thank you for the suggestions. I was seeing intermittent issues with VLC that resolved after a reboot, but after the most recent upgrade, the behavior became consistent, prompting my post.

Knowing that the currently installed VLC was no longer working, I removed it and commented out the DMO repo. After running "sudo apt-get upgrade", I tried reinstalling VLC and ran into this error:

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pablo@eltriunfo=> sudo apt-get install vlc
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have
requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable
distribution that some required packages have not yet been created
or been moved out of Incoming.
The following information may help to resolve the situation:

The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 vlc : Depends: vlc-nox (= 2.2.7-1~deb8u1) but 1:2.2.8-dmo1+deb8u1 is to be installed
       Recommends: vlc-plugin-notify (= 2.2.7-1~deb8u1) but 1:2.2.8-dmo1+deb8u1 is to be installed
       Recommends: vlc-plugin-samba (= 2.2.7-1~deb8u1) but it is not going to be installed
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages.
It looks like there are some dependencies that were installed with debian-multimedia that need to be cleaned up before I can move forward.

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#12 Post by extraspecialbitter »

I was able to reinstall VLC from the Jesse repo after removing the DMO versions of vlc-nox, vlc-plugin-notify and vlc-plugin-samba. Unfortunately I'm still running into the same exact problem. The application starts up, but crashes the moment I try to open up a file with it. Below is what happened when I tried playing a live stream.

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pablo@eltriunfo=> vlc
VLC media player 2.2.8 Weatherwax (revision 2.2.7-14-g3cc1d8cba9)
[0000000002171118] core libvlc: Running vlc with the default interface. Use 'cvlc' to use vlc without interface.
[00007f2e1c0010b8] http access: Raw-audio server found, mp3 demuxer selected
[00007f2e18005da8] mpgatofixed32 audio converter error: libmad error: bad main_data_begin pointer
Segmentation fault

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#13 Post by Bulkley »

Just a tip about extra repositories such as DMO. It is one thing to extract one package for special use. It is a different ball of wax to leave such a repository open for all time since every routine upgrade will be exposed to who knows what joining the parade. It becomes the gift that keeps on giving, generally for the worse.

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#14 Post by stevepusser »

You still have dmo versions of libvlc* installed. You also may have dmo versions of the libav* libraries installed now, which have also caused problems in the past.

I run a multimedia Jessie and Stretch repo of my own on the openSUSE Build Service where I try to make Shiny New Stuff available without those kind of problems.

Oh, I almost forgot:

NOT DEBIAN!!!!
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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#15 Post by extraspecialbitter »

stevepusser wrote:You still have dmo versions of libvlc* installed. You also may have dmo versions of the libav* libraries installed now, which have also caused problems in the past.

I run a multimedia Jessie and Stretch repo of my own on the openSUSE Build Service where I try to make Shiny New Stuff available without those kind of problems.

Oh, I almost forgot:

NOT DEBIAN!!!!
My bad. One would think that having the word "debian" in a repo named "debian-multimedia" would mean that the packages were sanctioned by Debian. 20-20 hindsight tells me otherwise, but I'm probably not the first person to make this mistake. With dmo now commented out in my /etc/apt/sources.list file, I installed smplayer, which does everything I needed vlc to do. This should suffice until I upgrade to Stretch - minus debian-multimedia.

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#16 Post by stevepusser »

I was actually referring to debiman's line in post #4
haha, any other distro and people would be screaming "Not Debian" already!
Usually aptitude with its multiple solutions installing -dev files can root out dmo libraries and replace them with the Debian ones. I'm talking about packages such as libavcodec-dev, libvlc-dev, and libvlccore-dev.
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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#17 Post by extraspecialbitter »

stevepusser wrote:I was actually referring to debiman's line in post #4
haha, any other distro and people would be screaming "Not Debian" already!
Usually aptitude with its multiple solutions installing -dev files can root out dmo libraries and replace them with the Debian ones. I'm talking about packages such as libavcodec-dev, libvlc-dev, and libvlccore-dev.
Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't married to vlc, so once I discovered that I wouldn't be able to easily untangle myself from its dmo dependencies, and that smplayer would do everything I needed it to do, the die was cast.

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#18 Post by stevepusser »

OK...anyway, my own multimedia repo is explained here, and is much safer than DMO: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=127574

Currently it has SMPlayer 18.2.0 with mplayer 1.3 & mpv 0.28 for its backends.
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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#19 Post by debiman »

extraspecialbitter wrote:Thanks for the clarification. I wasn't married to vlc, so once I discovered that I wouldn't be able to easily untangle myself from its dmo dependencies, and that smplayer would do everything I needed it to do, the die was cast.
glad you're satisfied, but the problems might come back in the future.
the only proper solution i see is

a) get a list of ALL packages (not applications) supplied by the debian-multimedia repo
b) force-uninstall them all
c) reinstall those that are still needed
d) honed to perfection: mark those re-installed as dependencies instead of explicitely installed

This is based on my rudimentary apt knowledge; i'm sure there's a more elegant way.

btw, for a long while now there's been talk about this particular repo "causing more harm than good".
i think jessie-backports is a better solution.

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Re: VLC crashing with segfault on Debian 8

#20 Post by extraspecialbitter »

Ultimately my plan is to upgrade to Debian 9 and to make a fresh start in terms of what repos I use when downloading software. This might be sooner than I expect, as more broken applications could be just an "apt-get update && apt-get upgrade" away.

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