Weird BadLength errors

[Jan Oberländer]

Hi,

first, I hope this is actually on-topic for this list; I'm not quite
certain, so I hope that you can point me to the right place if not.

This is an error that I have run into recently, and I can't quite tell
whether this is a hardware or software problem, and if it's software it
might not even be an X.org problem.

The error I get is this:

  X Error of failed request:  BadLength (poly request too large or
internal Xlib length error)
    Major opcode of failed request:  18 (X_ChangeProperty)
    Serial number of failed request:  49
    Current serial number in output stream:  52

It occurs with basically every program using X that issues this request.
Everything is running fine at first, but at some random point this error
starts popping up and prevents me from running almost everything.  My
first reaction to this was to restart X.  However that wouldn't make it
go away.  I use gdm as my login manager, which then basically keeps
failing with the same error.  The only thing 'fixing' it is a reboot.  I
can't tell you what exactly leads to this error popping up in the first
place, but one situation where I experienced this vaguely followed this
'timeline':

- at some point the system freezes hard (reason? don't know).  Running
  applications at that time: ion3 window manager, xterm, xclock, emacs,
  xmms.
- I reboot
- I log in again through gdm, running ion3 and various apps, everything
  works fine
- At some point the error comes up
- I log out
- gdm can't come up because the same error persists
- I stop gdm and startx manually
- X and ion3 start
- xterm etc. don't start because of the same error
- random testing: xmag works (because it apparently doesn't require the
  same request to start)

I don't know if this gives you any clues.

I'm not quite sure what to make of this at this point, so I'll just give
you my hardware and software setup, and please tell me if there are any
other system details that you need.

Hardware:
- Fujitsu Lifebook P-2120, Transmeta Crusoe TM5800, 512MB RAM
- lspci output:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Transmeta Corporation LongRun Northbridge (rev 03)
0000:00:00.1 RAM memory: Transmeta Corporation SDRAM controller
0000:00:00.2 RAM memory: Transmeta Corporation BIOS scratchpad
0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:04.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 01)
0000:00:06.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 Power Management Controller [PMU]
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
0000:00:09.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
0000:00:09.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 41)
0000:00:09.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 02)
0000:00:0c.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:0f.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c3)
0000:00:10.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:00:12.0 Network controller: Intersil Corporation Prism 2.5 Wavelan chipset (rev 01)
0000:00:13.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
0000:00:14.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY

Software:
- Gentoo Linux, Base System version 1.6.10, last world update run in
  March
- Linux 2.6.11.6 vanilla kernel
- lsmod output:
Module                  Size  Used by
md5                     3616  1 
ipv6                  247840  8 
orinoco_pci             5312  0 
orinoco                41900  1 orinoco_pci
hermes                  7680  2 orinoco_pci,orinoco
8139too                21568  0 
mii                     3968  1 8139too
i2c_ali15x3             6532  0 
snd_ali5451            20580  0 
snd_ac97_codec         75352  1 snd_ali5451
evdev                   7392  0 
pcmcia                 19336  2 
yenta_socket           20008  1 
rsrc_nonstatic          9152  1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core            42356  3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
- CFLAGS="-O3 -march=i686 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer
  -mpreferred-stack-boundary=2 -falign-functions=0 -falign-jumps=0
  -falign-loops=0 -funroll-loops"
- X.Org: installed Gentoo package xorg-x11-6.8.2-r1
X Window System Version 6.8.2
Release Date: 9 February 2005
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0, Release 6.8.2
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.8.1 i686 [ELF] 
Current Operating System: Linux hek506b 2.6.11.6 #1 Sun Apr 3 04:24:06 EDT 2005 i686

Hmm, I hope this gives you some ideas, but please tell me if there's
anything else you need, or if I'm in the completely wrong place for this
type of question... :)

Thanks in advance,

Jan

-- 

+-------------------------------------+
| Jan Oberländer   <mindriot at gmx.net> |
|         PGP key: 0xC4D910E3         |
+-------------------------------------+