Problem with Ubuntu 10.04 beta

[paulonolan]

I have used BC3 (v3.1.10-11626) with Ubuntu 10.04 beta 1 without problem until today.

After a software update that included a new kernel (2.6.32-19) BC no longer works properly; the display becomes unusable, see attached file. I don't know what's wrong but no other software has a problem. I tried removing BC and reinstalling it. This didn't change anything.

Any ideas?

[Chris]

It looks like a font problem. It's possible when you ran the update it also changed something in your QT3 theme settings.

It might help to edit your qtrc file to specify theme and font settings.

Try saving the following as $HOME/.qt/qtrc

[General]
GUIEffects=none^e
XIMInputStyle=On The Spot
enableXft=true
font=Sans Serif,10,-1,5,50,0,0,0,0,0
libraryPath=/usr/lib/beyondcompare/plugins
resolveSymlinks=false
style=platinum
useRtlExtensions=true
useXft=true

[Palette]
active=#000000^e#e4e4e4^e#ffffff^e#fafafa^e#5f5f5f^e#bebebe^e#000000^e#ffffff^e#000000^e#ffffff^e#e4e4e4^e#000000^e#000080^e#ffffff^e#0000ee^e#52188b^e
disabled=#808080^e#e4e4e4^e#ffffff^e#fafafa^e#5f5f5f^e#bebebe^e#bebebe^e#ffffff^e#808080^e#ffffff^e#e4e4e4^e#000000^e#00006a^e#ffffff^e#0000ee^e#52188b^e
inactive=#000000^e#e4e4e4^e#ffffff^e#fafafa^e#5f5f5f^e#bebebe^e#000000^e#ffffff^e#000000^e#ffffff^e#e4e4e4^e#000000^e#000080^e#ffffff^e#0000ee^e#52188b^e

[paulonolan]

Thanks. I tried. No joy. My .qt folder contains

qt_plugins_3.3rc
qtrc
.qt_plugins_3.3rc.lock
.qtrc.lock

the lock files are 0 bytes. I don't have a /usr/lib/beyondcompare/plugins folder (nor did I before the kernel upgrade). My theme is (was) Dust. I've just found that the theme controls have been updated with the addition of a customise button, (or I didn't notice it before). Tried changing theme to Clearlooks. No change.

[paulonolan]

Here's the contents of the qt_plugins_3.3rc file, just in case (it doesn't mean much to me, alas)

[usr]
lib/kde3/plugins/styles/plastik.so=30306^e3^ei686 Linux g++-4.* full-config^e2006-09-29T20:06:31^e
lib/qt3/plugins/imageformats/libqmng.so=30300^e3^ei686 Linux g++-4.* full-config^e2009-11-09T19:10:58^e
lib/qt3/plugins/inputmethods/libqimsw-multi.so=30300^e3^ei686 Linux g++-4.* full-config^e2009-11-09T19:10:58^e
lib/qt3/plugins/inputmethods/libqimsw-none.so=30300^e3^ei686 Linux g++-4.* full-config^e2009-11-09T19:10:58^e
lib/qt3/plugins/inputmethods/libqsimple.so=30300^e3^ei686 Linux g++-4.* full-config^e2009-11-09T19:10:58^e
lib/qt3/plugins/inputmethods/libqxim.so=30300^e3^ei686 Linux g++-4.* full-config^e2009-11-09T19:10:58^e

It was unchanged from a backup predating the kernel upgrade.

[David]

I tried to replicate what you are seeing. I downloaded Ubuntu 10.04 beta, installed in a VmWare machine, then installed BCompare and it ran fine - after I installed the libqt3-mt files. I then used the Software Update utility to have the OS do all of its updates. I lost the ability to login in with my keyboard (have to use the onscreen keyboard) but BCompare still runs fine.

So unfortunately I did not see what you are experiencing.

I would guess that most of the apps that you are running will be using the qt4 that Ubuntu 10.04 uses. BeyondCompare uses qt3. So libqt-mt.so.3 is a possible culprit. You might try going to Synaptic and re-installing libqt-mt.so.3 with the qt3 package.

David

[paulonolan]

sudo apt-get install .... ??? what?

python-qt3?

That's a guess from entering qt3 into Google. As I said, the stuff above doesn't meant a lot me. Anyway, I tried installing python-qt3 (and got python-sip automatically as well).

Didn't resolve the display problem.

I will do two things, with a spare drive: revert to the previous kernel and try a new install from scratch.

Will let you know.

[paulonolan]

Ok, I rolled back to the previous kernel by editing grub. No change.

Next I tried a fresh install and then installed BC and it worked ok. However, I hadn't yet installed the NVIDIA hardware driver and when I tried to do so it failed. It had worked ok the first time around so it seems that there have been some changes that break this. I've since found some messages from a couple of days ago on ubuntuforums.org giving the same error message for the failed installation.

I don't have a graphics card in this machine; it's just a Gigabyte motherboard with an Nvidia 630i chipset. It seems the drivers available from Ubuntu repositories are old.

I have a hunch that my using a KVM switch may be a problem and that if I revert to my old xorg.conf I may get past this. But there's a lot more traffic than I was previouly aware of of Nvidia problems with Ubuntu<sigh>, but I'm puzzled why BC was the only thing apparently affected --for me.

[paulonolan]

OK, I don't fully understand why yet but my ATEN CS1734B KVM switch is implicated in the problem.

A clean install without the switch in place and a full update before installing

a) Nvidia driver and
b) BC

worked (installing video drivers then system update did not work; driver install crashed. In fact the driver now installs automatically after the system update).

Doing a clean install and reusing the old xorg.conf was not ok if the KVM switch was in place during the install (video driver install crashed reliably; didn't happen a week ago).

Somewhere along the line Ubuntu's inability to determine all the video parameters caused a problem.

[paulonolan]

Resolved:

The video driver problem may or may not have been a red herring, I don't know. In the end once I got to compare old and new home directories I found some differences in

/home/username/.beyondcompare

some xml.err files (I can send these if useful)
a BCLOCK_0.0 directory
a registry.dat file (copy retained)
an IsPro file (1 byte)

Deleting everything except the key file resolved the problem. The registry.dat file and the xml error files were all created at the same time.

[Aaron]

Thanks for the info, Paul. I'm glad you were able to get that resolved over the weekend. If you have any other issues or questions, please let us know.

[Zoë]

The xml.err files might be useful. I've searched all of our source code and I can't find any references to it.

[paulonolan]

Sorry Craig, I meant XML error files (plural!) not an xml.err file specifically. I've emailed them to you.