gnu backgammon problem

[daniewicz]

Any backgammon players out there?

 

I installed gnu backgammon gnubg 0.9 on my 2010.2 system with KDE.

 

As I near the end of a game, the program crashes (sometimes) with the following message:

 

Segmentation fault

 

 

 

Can anyone help?

[ianw1974]

I'm guessing that's the only error that is shown when you launched gnu backgammon from the console window? No other text?

 

The only real way of diagnosing that would be to run an strace as you play the game, but it will generate a load of info, but would be ideal to add to a bug report as that strace would show exactly what is going on.

 

Could try switching from your Xorg video driver to vesa and see if it would settle down a bit? Before doing an strace with your existing video driver.

[demonseth17]

sorry I didn't have any idea so I googled it

 

got this that links link1 and Link 2

 

which help me understand, sorry I couldn't help w/ a solution but maybe with definition of possible causes

 

best luck ;)

[Greg2]

Here's a quick fix... if you don't need sound. Open the game gui and go to settings > options > sound > and disable the sound effects > click OK. :)

 

Also, you 'may' have to do this every time you start the gui... or add the -q option to the command line:

gnubg -q

:D

[daniewicz]

Thanks for the responses guys

 

Ian

I'm guessing that's the only error that is shown when you launched gnu backgammon from the console window? No other text?

yes, that is all I am seeing from the console

 

Greg

Not that I am doubting you, but why do you think this is a sound related problem?

[Greg2]

I was also having an intermittent segmentation fault during the game. So I opened the game with the -d (debug) option

gnubg -d

for more output, but that didn't show the problem. I then used gdb to run the game

gdb /path/to/gnubg

then entered 'run' to check. This gave me some libpulse text in the output.

 

So I turned off the sound and the game hasn't had a sigsegv since... YMMV :unsure:

[daniewicz]

Thanks Greg. I was not familiar with gdb so I learned something. I will turn off the sound and see how it goes.

[daniewicz]

Well turning off the sound did not work for me. I have noticed that if I keep the default design, there is no crashing.

 

I remember now while I stopped playing gnubg long ago. I grew tired of getting spanked! This is POWERFUL stuff.

[ianw1974]

Video driver? Like I mentioned, maybe change to vesa, and see what happens? Did you not try this yet? :)

[Greg2]

I grew tired of getting spanked! This is POWERFUL stuff.

 

Turn the predefined settings down. It's probably set on expert by default, so try the advanced setting. If you really want to get spanked... set it on grandmaster. :D

[daniewicz]

Ian,

 

I have a ridiculously underpowered GeForce FX 5200 video card, so if I switch to the vesa driver my KDE struggles. Thus I have not tried to make this driver switch. I appreciate your input, but I think I need fixes that allow me to stay with the NVidia driver.

[ianw1974]

You only needed to switch temporarily to find out if the nvidia driver is the problem. Not asking you to do it permanently. If we then find that the nvidia driver is the problem, then we need to check the version and if there is another version of it newer or something that you can use.

[daniewicz]

Well I am getting back to this problem after being distracted by other things.

 

Before trying Ian's suggestion, I decided to implement the gnu debugger (gdb) as suggested by Greg. When I run gnubg from within gdb, I am unable to make gnubg crash! In other words, if I run the program as follows all is well:

 

gdb /usr/games/gnubg

 

:o