Xscreensaver started to dump core

I’m having issues with xscreensaver crashing and dumping core. The system boots just fine, I can login, etc. But once the screen locks, I’m unable to login again - the screen remains black, the system wakes up and powers the screen, but the login does not show.

It appears this is due to “xscreensaver-au” dumping core, because that’s what journalctl shows:

May 21 13:28:06 dom0 systemd-coredump[7767]: [🡕] Process 7159 (xss-lock) of user 1000 dumped core.
                                             
Module linux-vdso.so.1 with build-id 48a171168c9f9680fa1a3f539f918165e60a092f
Module libblkid.so.1 with build-id aeba6db218817bd52da2ff14e8c369d370ba25cf
Metadata for module libblkid.so.1 owned by FDO found: {
        "type" : "rpm",
        "name" : "util-linux",
        "version" : "2.38.1-1.fc37",
        "architecture" : "x86_64",
        "osCpe" : "cpe:/o:fedoraproject:fedora:37"
}
...
Stack trace of thread 6446:
#0  0x000073595a3adecc __pthread_kill_implementation (libc.so.6 + 0x8cecc)
#1  0x000073595a35dab6 raise (libc.so.6 + 0x3cab6)
#2  0x000073595a3477fc abort (libc.so.6 + 0x267fc)
#3  0x000059811bf72a0d minixpm_to_ximage (xscreensaver-auth + 0x13a0d)
#4  0x000059811bf7446d window_init (xscreensaver-auth + 0x1546d)
#5  0x000059811bf74f67 xscreensaver_auth_conv (xscreensaver-auth + 0x15f67)
#6  0x000059811bf6f623 pam_conversation (xscreensaver-auth + 0x10623)
#7  0x000073595a5401e2 pam_vprompt (libpam.so.0 + 0x81e2)
#8  0x000073595a54042e pam_prompt (libpam.so.0 + 0x842e)
#9  0x000073595a5405f7 pam_get_authtok_internal (libpam.so.0 + 0x85f7)
#10 0x0000735959b0aa5c pam_sm_authenticate (pam_unix.so + 0x8a5c)
#11 0x000073595a54137e _pam_dispatch (libpam.so.0 + 0x937e)
#12 0x000073595a541b6d pam_authenticate (libpam.so.0 + 0x9b6d)
#13 0x000059811bf6f225 pam_try_unlock (xscreensaver-auth + 0x10225)
#14 0x000059811bf6a134 main (xscreensaver-auth + 0xb134)
#15 0x000073595a348550 __libc_start_call_main (libc.so.6 + 0x27550)
#16 0x000073595a348609 __libc_start_main@@GLIBC_2.34 (libc.so.6 + 0x27609)
#17 0x000059811bf6a715 _start (xscreensaver-auth + 0xb715)
ELF object binary architecture: AMD x86-64

The stack trace varies a little bit (I have tried some changes to xcreensaver settings, so maybe that’s why).

This started appearing earlier today, there were no xscreensaver core dumps before that. And I see it on both my systems, so it doesn’t seem like a coincidence / system-specific issue. I keep them updated, so it may be a version-specific issue (but not sure which package).

Am I the only one seeing this? My systems are not particularly unique.

The easiest way to recover from this I found is to switch to text console (Ctrl-Alt-F2) and restart the “user.slice”.

Maybe related?

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Thanks, it seems related. The laptop doesn’t have a hires display, but the symptoms match.

Unfortunately I’ve been unable to downgrade the package (the versions don’t seem to exist, for some reason).

If you tried to downgrade to xscreensaver-base-6.08-2, try to change the -2 with -1 instead (xscreensaver-base-6.08-1). -2 doesn’t exist for Qubes 4.2, but it does for Qubes 4.3.

I’m still on 4.2. I guess I’ll have to live with the “killall xscreensaver” workaround for a while. That at least doesn’t kill the whole session.

A new package update has been released, but it is currently in the testing repository.
If you would like to try it out, run the following command in a dom0 terminal:

sudo qubes-dom0-update xscreensaver-base --action=upgrade --enablerepo=qubes-dom0-current-testing
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Woderful. Works like a charm. Thanks!

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