+++ /dev/null
-
- XScreenSaver
-
- a handy guide for creating useful bug reports
-
- --------
-
- It's hard to imagine, but sometimes, xscreensaver has bugs. This
- document gives some hints for isolating them; the more information
- you can give me about the problem, the better the odds that I'll be
- able to fix it. But, if you don't have time to go through these
- steps, please report the bug anyway -- even vague bug reports can
- be better than no bug report at all.
-
- --------
-STEP ZERO:
-
- What are you doing here? Go read README, and then the man page.
-
-STEP ZERO, PART TWO:
-
- Do you have the most recent version? Go make sure.
- http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/.
-
-COMPILATION PROBLEMS:
-
- If you get an error running the `configure' script, the first thing
- you should try is deleting the `config.cache' file, and running again.
- If that doesn't fix it, the information I'll need to see to make
- sense of the problem is the following:
-
- * everything printed to stderr/stdout when you first ran
- ./configure;
-
- * the contents of the `config.log' file.
-
- Make sure you blow away the config.cache file before regenerating
- this info, or else the `config.log' file will be mostly empty/useless.
-
- Experience seems to show that the most common configure problem is
- that sites have gcc installed, but installed improperly. The
- configure script will always try to use gcc in preference to another
- compiler if gcc exists, so if gcc exists but is broken, it won't
- work. Your options are:
-
- * get someone to fix the gcc installation;
-
- * rearrange your $PATH so that the broken gcc is not on it;
-
- * or pass $CC in the environment, like so:
-
- csh: setenv CC cc ; ./configure
- sh: CC=cc ./configure
-
- Before doing this, you'll need to nuke `config.cache'.
-
- If you get errors about not being able to find Gtk, then perhaps
- the problem is that you don't have some kind of ``development
- option'' installed.
-
-RUN-TIME PROBLEMS:
-
- For runtime errors, it's important to keep in mind that there are
- two parts to xscreensaver: there is the screensaver driver process
- (the daemon that detects idleness, deals with locking, and launches
- the demos); and there are the demos themselves (independent programs
- that draw pretty pictures.)
-
- * Compile with `make CFLAGS=-g' (so that if you get a core
- dump, there will be debugging info in it.)
-
- * What platform are you running on? What does the included
- `./config.guess' shell script print?
-
- * Is the problem in the driver (`xscreensaver'), the GUI
- (`xscreensaver-demo'), or in the graphics hacks?
-
- * If the problem is in the GUI, was it built using Gtk, Motif,
- or Lesstif? Which version?
-
- * If the problem is in one (or more) of the hacks, which ones?
- If you're not sure, try running `xscreensaver-demo' to go
- through the list of them and see which work and which don't.
-
- * Does the problem occur when running that hack by hand, in
- its own window (i.e., when started with no command-line args)?
-
- * Does the problem occur when running that hack by hand, on
- the root window (i.e., when started with the `-root' option)?
-
- * IMPORTANT: What visual are you using? Send the output of
- the `xdpyinfo' command.
-
- * Does the problem go away if you give the program a different
- `-visual' argument? (For example, `-visual pseudocolor' or
- `-visual truecolor'.)
-
- * IMPORTANT: What exactly goes wrong? No, I don't know what
- you mean by "crash". Does it print an "X Error" and exit?
- Does it dump core? Does it go into a loop?
-
- * If it dumps core, what does the core file say? Run the
- program under a debugger, and show me the stack trace.
- To extract a stack trace from a core file with gdb, do this:
-
- gdb ./the-program ./core
- bt
-
- To extract a stack trace from a core file with dbx, do this:
-
- dbx ./the-program ./core
- where
-
- If the bottom few lines of the output don't include the functions
- `main_loop()' and `main()', then something went wrong, and the
- core file is bogus. If the lines it prints out contain only
- question marks, then the core file is bogus. Are you sure the
- core file came from that program? Did you compile with -g, as
- explained above? If you don't compile with -g, the core file
- won't have any information in it.
-
- Never ever ever mail me (or anyone) a core file. They are huge,
- and are only meaningful on the machine that generated them, with
- the exact executable that generated them, neither of which anyone
- but you has access to. Don't mail me a core file unless you're
- also planning on mailing me your computer.
-
- * If it gets an X error, where did it come from? Run
- xscreensaver with the `-sync' command-line option. When `-sync'
- is used, X errors will cause xscreensaver to dump a core file.
- Look at the core file with a debugger and show me the stack trace,
- as above: I need to know where in xscreensaver that X error came
- from.
-
- If the problem is with the xscreensaver process itself, or if you
- can't figure out which demo is causing the problem, or if you can't
- reproduce the problem in isolation, then you will need to turn on
- and examine the debugging output of the driver process.
-
- * Start `xscreensaver' with the command-line arguments
-
- -verbose -no-capture
-
- This will cause it to write a lot of debugging info to the stderr
- of the xscreensaver process (the `-verbose' option turns on the
- diagnostics; the `-no-capture' option prevents the data from being
- displayed on the screensaver window as well.)
-
- * If the problem is intermittent, you might want to capture the
- log information to a file and examine it later. For example,
- you could start it from your login script like this (csh syntax):
-
- xscreensaver -sync -verbose -no-capture >>& saverlog &
-
- * Hackers only: If you're feeling adventurous enough to run gdb
- on the xscreensaver driver process itself, make sure you've
- read the commentary at the top of xscreensaver.c.
-
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- http://www.jwz.org/xscreensaver/
- Jamie Zawinski <jwz@jwz.org>
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
projects / xscreensaver / blobdiff