Wine HARD System Freeze

[SpEcIeS]

Yesterday I tried the latest wine 0.9.38 and it locked up my computer HARD. Nothing to save it, so I just reset it.

Since around 0.9.24 I have had this problem and stopped using wine altogether. Whether using Ubuntu or Debian, wine locks up hard. Tried with NVIDIA and ATI, which is currently my video card, and had the same results.

What has happened with wine? Does anyone have an answer to this mysterious issue?

[KenJackson]

Did you install a precompiled package from a repository or compile it from source?

If precompiled, maybe that build is bad. Try downloading the source and compiling it. There is a script, tools/wineinstall, in the source distribution that builds and installs it. It prompts you for the root password when it's ready to install.

[SpEcIeS]

Thanks, but I have been down that path in the past with no success. I am pretty sure that the deb packages that are supplied from winehq are good, however, I will do a tarball install just to see if this time it works.

I have noticed when googling this problem that there are lots of people with this issue, but no, or few solutions. The solutions that were presented did not pan out for my system.

Off to compile.. yet again ...

[SpEcIeS]

Did a complete build of 0.9.38 and met with failure. This time the system HARD locked during the installation. First time for that one.

What has happened to wine?

[dankegel]

If installing or running Wine causes your system to lock up,
you have a system problem. It is extremely unlikely that it's
Wine's fault. In normal operation, Wine is unable to lock up
your computer because of Linux's normal process protection
and time sharing. It's much more likely that you have either
bad video drivers or some other problem that is causing your
system to be unstable.

A few obvious questions:
does glxgears work?
does switching to open source x.org drivers help?
are you overclocking?

[SpEcIeS]

On my system I am using the ATI 8.37.6 drivers, however I had the same problem running Ubuntu a couple of versions back using an NVIDIA card. This is when the problem first presented itself.

This problem manifested itself around 0.9.24. Prior to that I had no problem and was impressed with the project.

When I say "What has happened to wine?" I am referring to the changes that have been made which cause such a disasterous result. Perhaps I should have been clearer on that.

As for overclocking.. not in my world.

I will try it using vesa drivers. That "should" work, but I cringe at the possiblity of system lockups.

Edit
After looking around I found that this problem started at 0.9.22. The problem is noted on the Ubuntu forum: wine causes total system freeze - Page 2 - Ubuntu Forums

[KenJackson]

In normal operation, Wine is unable to lock up your computer because of Linux's normal process protection and time sharing.

This is a very good point.

SpEcles, do you do normally do anything with your PC that causes it to do intense disk access? I used to have an ASUS that would freeze solid with the disk drive light on when I was doing a lot of independent things that each accessed the disk. I finally replaced that motherboard because the very same OS and software ran fine on other PCs.

Maybe you could do something like this as a test. It should cause lots and lots of disk activity. Do it simultaneously with web surfing or something else. If it causes a crash, then Wine is innocent. (But if it doesn't cause a crash, Wine might still be innocent.)

for f in $(find / -type f); do cp -f "$f" /dev/null; done

[dankegel]

Linux is a real OS. It doesn't let a single app like Wine take
down the system. The only way Wine can trigger a system
lockup like that is if you have a hardware or driver problem.

So something might have changed in Wine, but that just
means Wine turned into a better testcase for the problem
your system has.

One guy in the thread you mention said that
the problem went away when he rebuilt his system.
Another guy in the thread said that the graphics driver
in question was known to be unstable.
Yet another guy (maybe the first one) said that
the problem went away if he didn't load his sound drivers.

The graphics or sound drivers seem like the most likely culprits offhand.

Please visit the wine-users mailing list and post your question
there, and be sure to include the name of your graphics and
sound cards, along with the version of Linux you're using.
wine-users Info Page
Maybe they can help you step through debugging your system.
- Dan

[SpEcIeS]

These are very valid reasonings and I agree with them. However, one issue comes to mind, which is a kernel one.

It has been a while since I used Ubuntu, but I believe when the wine problems started, using 0.9.22, the kernel version was 2.6.18, I think. Now, when I tested out Fedora Core 6 0.9.22 worked without problems, or so my messages indicate. One thing to question is, did I have the NVIDIA drivers installed? I am pretty sure I did, however that presents a possibility. Nevertheless, the kernel version with Fedora Core 6 I believe was 2.6.19.

Currently I am now rebuilding the Debian 2.6.18 kernel with the bootsplash patch, but later I am going to try 2.6.21 to test my theory.

I agree with this:
Originally Posted by dankegel
In normal operation, Wine is unable to lock up your computer because of Linux's normal process protection and time sharing.

... and that it is most likely associated with video or sound drivers.

I have not tried the VESA driver on my computer yet nor the for f in $(find / -type f); do cp -f "$f" /dev/null; done work load line, but I will after my kernel compiling.

Thanks for your insights into this matter.

[SpEcIeS]

Well, tried both ideas, VESA and kernel 2.6.21, and both still lock up. I agree that is must be a driver issue, so I looked into my logs.

Here are a couple of Xorg.0.log Errors that I found. Perhaps these are associated to this issue:
dlopen: /usr/lib/xorg/modules/extensions/libGLcore.so: undefined symbol: _glapi_Dispatch

(EE) AIGLX error: dlsym for __driCreateNewScreen_20050727 failed (/usr/lib/dri/fglrx_dri.so: undefined symbol: __driCreateNewScreen_20050727)
(EE) AIGLX: reverting to software rendering


Could someone direct me to an xorg.conf example for and ATI Radeon 1300 pro so that I can compare?