Xorg assert failure: X: /usr/include/xorg/privates.h:122: dixGetPrivateAddr: Assertion `key->initialized' failed.

StacktraceTop:
 __kernel_vsyscall ()
 *__GI_raise (sig=6)
 *__GI_abort () at abort.c:92
 *__GI___assert_fail (assertion=0x3a3c4b "key->initialized",
 SavageUpdateKey (pScrn=<value optimized out>,

II've had the same error message after I upgraded from Kubuntu 10.04 to 10.10 (with updates) yesterday. My PC has two Radeon cards (RV350 and RV370).
After many hours trying bring my system to live I've found that in my case the cause of problem was:
Load "v4l"
option in "Module" section of this file.
Commenting this line fixed KDM (and Xorg) start.

Could you see if you have /etc/X11/xorg.conf and post it here if you've got it?

Hi Tomasz,

Unfortunately I don't have those files anymore. This bug, as well as
another (probably unrelated) problem with grub not seeing the 2
partitions made me give up on Ubuntu and install Fedora 13 which works
well. However I have Ubuntu on another machine that runs OK but I cannot
longer use the Nvidia proprietary driver. It seems that Maverick 10.10
has still a few rough edges to polish (no pun intended!)

Best regards,

Daniel

On Mon, 2010-11-01 at 20:59 +0000, Tomasz Czapiewski wrote:
> II've had the same error message after I upgraded from Kubuntu 10.04 to 10.10 (with updates) yesterday. My PC has two Radeon cards (RV350 and RV370).
> After many hours trying bring my system to live I've found that in my case the cause of problem was:
> Load "v4l"
> option in "Module" section of this file.
> Commenting this line fixed KDM (and Xorg) start.
>
> Could you see if you have /etc/X11/xorg.conf and post it here if you've
> got it?
>

I can confirm this on 10.10. We need to pull in http://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/driver/xf86-video-savage/commit/?id=830e58d086828fa0431303df32a847ddd3022654 for 10.10. For natty we will probably pull in 2.3.2 which includes this fix. Anyway, I have attached a debdiff for natty, so it can be tested there before being SRU'ed to 10.10.

This patch looks fine and builds fine. I would upload it, but I'm not core-dev.

The current savage driver has problems rendering any OpenGL application. The experimental one, which can be found as a DEB off of Debian's website, sort of fixes the problem. It can be found at <http://packages.debian.org/experimental/xserver-xorg-video-savage>. The problem that Daniel is having is relating to OpenGL attempting to initialise itself with Gnome's screensaver, and failing due to bugs in the Savage driver. This causes X to crash, and X restarts, logging the user off. This happens with other OpenGL applications as well, such as OpenGL accelerated video in VLC or Gnome MPlayer, ZSnes with OpenGL enabled, Neverball, and other multimedia applications/games. By downloading the experimental version off of Debian's website, the crashes will stop. This, however, leads to another problem: OpenGL is painfully slow even in simple applications with the newer savage driver. But at least it works. And it seems the I will get funky colours if I use hardware accelerated X11 on an application such as Snes9x, even with the new driver. I hope somebody knows what/how to fix this driver. Help is appreciated, as this bug has many duplicates, so it must be having a negative impact in many other places as well.

Debdiff looks good to me as well, I've gone ahead and uploaded it to natty.

This bug was fixed in the package xserver-xorg-video-savage - 1:2.3.1-2ubuntu3

---------------
xserver-xorg-video-savage (1:2.3.1-2ubuntu3) natty; urgency=low

  * 101_fix_use_of_privates.diff: From upstream, fixes crashes due to
    use of uninitialized privates. LP: #635362
 -- Tormod Volden <email address hidden> Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:14:17 +0100

SRU rationale: On all savage hardware this bug is critical and makes the desktop unusable due to random X crashes. The attached minimal patch is taken from the newer upstream release 2.3.2. It does not affect other hardware.

TEST CASE: Use the normal desktop for a while, or activate random screen savers. Especially use of accelerated graphics such as 3D applications and notification bubbles can cause X to crash fast.

Hopefully this will be backported to Maverick as well.

This is what the SRU (Stable Release Update) process is for. It may speed things up if someone can confirm that everything is fine in Natty now.

I tested today's natty live CD and it works fine. I was not able to make X crash.

Uploaded maverick debdiff to maverick-proposed. Subscribing ubuntu-sru. Thanks for the debdiff!

Accepted xserver-xorg-video-savage into maverick-proposed, the package will build now and be available in a few hours. Please test and give feedback here. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Testing/EnableProposed for documentation how to enable and use -proposed. Thank you in advance!

I had a seemingly related problem with the Savage video driver where switching to a virtual terminal and then back to X would crash X and permanently corrupt the display of the virtual terminals. Updating to the maverick-proposed version of xserver-xorg-video-savage has fixed this problem for me.

I had a related problem (bug 769799) where X would crash whenever the screensaver was activated. Installing the upgrade from maverick-proposed fixed the problem

This bug was fixed in the package xserver-xorg-video-savage - 1:2.3.1-2ubuntu2.1

---------------
xserver-xorg-video-savage (1:2.3.1-2ubuntu2.1) maverick-proposed; urgency=low

  * 101_fix_use_of_privates.diff: From upstream, fixes crashes due to
    use of uninitialized privates. LP: #635362
 -- Tormod Volden <email address hidden> Thu, 16 Dec 2010 00:14:17 +0100