Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 7463
gnome help browser aborts
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:53 EDT
NOTE: gnome-utils seemed to be the closest fit to the gnome-help-browser. This is a bug report for the gnome-help-browser. I ran the gnome-help-browser twice as shown by the following trace from the X-window: [root@Learn /root]# gnome-help-browser Aborted (core dumped) [root@Learn /root]# gdb gnome-help-browser GNU gdb 19991004 Copyright 1998 Free Software Foundation, Inc. GDB is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License, and you are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under certain conditions. Type "show copying" to see the conditions. There is absolutely no warranty for GDB. Type "show warranty" for details. This GDB was configured as "i386-redhat-linux"... (no debugging symbols found)... (gdb) r Starting program: /usr/bin/gnome-help-browser (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... (no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)... Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault. 0x405444e4 in chunk_alloc (ar_ptr=0x405d9040, nb=16) at malloc.c:2699 2699 malloc.c: No such file or directory. (gdb) bt #0 0x405444e4 in chunk_alloc (ar_ptr=0x405d9040, nb=16) at malloc.c:2699 #1 0x4054440a in __libc_malloc (bytes=5) at malloc.c:2643 #2 0x403b3ca6 in g_malloc () from /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0 #3 0x403bc183 in g_strdup () from /usr/lib/libglib-1.2.so.0 #4 0x8050ed0 in newInfoTable () #5 0x804f754 in newToc () #6 0x804e698 in main () #7 0x405041eb in __libc_start_main (main=0x804e4f0 <main>, argc=1, argv=0xbffffbd4, init=0x804cdd8 <_init>, fini=0x80573fc <_fini>, rtld_fini=0x4000a610 <_dl_fini>, stack_end=0xbffffbcc) at ../sysdeps/generic/libc-start.c:90 (gdb) quit The program is running. Exit anyway? (y or n) y [root@Learn /root]# Both time the program aborted. If I delete all then ".gnome*" directories the program then runs correctly. The directories will reappear so I assume that they are copied if they do not exist. I do not know what happened to cause this error, but it has come back several times after being eliminated.
More information - I now believe that the problem is associated with the gnome-help-browser directory. When I deleted that directory the help browser then started working correctly. I think it re-creates the directory if it is not there. The "default" recreation seems to be OK - somehow it becomes problematic as things change. I don't know what changes cause the problem to come back, but I have seem this problem come back about 10 times now.
When I log in as "root" the gnome-help-browser always core dumps immediately when gnome tries to run it as part of its start up process. It also core dumps when I try to invoke it. The problem seems to be associated with the .gnome-help-browser/history file. If I delete this file then the help browser can be invoked. The file causing the problem appears to contain: toc: 945294268 1 Hope this helps....
Please get the gnome-core errata for RHL 6.1 - gnome-help-browser has had a few fixes since gnome-core 1.0.40.
I'm using gnome-core 1.0.54 (release 2), the lastest RPM available from the RH 6.1 errata and I'm getting exactly the same problem as described, and the gdb backtrace of the core dump is identical to the one described in the initial entry for this bug. I removed ~/.gnome-help-browser/history and that's temporarely fixed the problem, but it's clear the problem will re-appear and thus this bug should be re-opened.