Package: xserver-xfree86 Version: 4.2.1-4 Followup-For: Bug #170805 I also ran into this problem, here are some more details:
I can confirm the problem persists in the 4.2.1 packages, but with a different
font than Aleksandra (also I'm using "radeon" driver whereas she uses "nv").
The font is a bitmap font named "tixus" and comes from an old debian package
called "xfonts-gimpers" which is not in the debian archive any more. I'm
attaching the small 3kB font file to this message.
To reproduce this problem you can put it in /usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc, run
update-fonts-dir on that directory, and then restart X.
Try running first "xfontsel -pattern -gimpers-tixus-*-*-*-*-10-*-*-*-*-*-*-*".
You will notice that the font displays correctly using size of 10 pixels which
is it's native size. But as soon as you try it with size different than 10 pix
it will crash the X server.
I'm guessing that the font Aleksandra was using contained the same thing that
triggered this bitmap-font-resize bug in XFree 4.2.1. The reason that the font
sometimes worked and sometimes crashed her X server is that she was probably
using the font at its native size in her xterm consoles, but she forced it to
be rendered at a non-native size (18) with xfontsel. I could be wrong of
course, but atleast on my machine X consistently crashes when using the font
at non-native size, regardless if it's xterm or xfontsel or any other client.
That's about all I can think of, I'd be happy to provide any more information
you might need.
P.S. I tried, perhaps a bit naively, to get a backtrace from the X server
crash by logging in from another machine while X is running, using gdb to
attach to the X server process and then reproducing the crash with gdb
attached, but merely attaching gdb to the X process immediately froze my
machine tight, requiring a cold reboot! :-}
-- Package-specific info:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY
01:00.0 Class 0300: 1002:4c59
(I deleted the non-relevant stuff from this section, my XF86Config-4 is
managed by debconf, and the XFree86.0.log file provides no more information
than the one provided by Aleksandra)
Section "Files"
#FontPath "unix/:7100" # local font server
# if the local font server has problems, we can fall back on these
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
# Added by me
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/CID"
EndSection
-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
Architecture: i386
Kernel: Linux inspiron 2.4.20-ck1 #1 Thu Dec 5 17:16:02 CET 2002 i686
Locale: LANG=C, LC_CTYPE=C
Versions of packages xserver-xfree86 depends on:
ii debconf 1.2.16 Debian configuration management sy
ii libc6 2.3.1-5 GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii xserver-common 4.2.1-4 files and utilities common to all
ii zlib1g 1:1.1.4-8 compression library - runtime
-- debconf information excluded
tixus.bdf.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data
