segfault on Ubuntu 11.10, Nvidia GeForce 9600, driver 280.13

[Don Killian]

Hi all,

Sorry to bother, but I'm running into some problems which are preventing 
me from using certain applications. I tried not to have a typical 
subject line of 'crash', 'fail', etc, but the current errors are simply 
beyond my level of skill, so I was wondering if someone could help.  I 
have an Acer Aspire 7730G laptop with an external monitor I sometimes 
use.  I'm using Ubuntu 11.10, with Gnome 3 instead of Unity, and I'm 
running into problems when using certain programs, namely Skype and 
pdfsam. When I start them, then gnome crashes and I get logged out. My 
version of Xorg is 1:7.6+7ubuntu7.1.

I've tried a number of different things: I upgraded my Nvidia driver 
from the 173 to 280.13.. I disabled Xinerama, which I was told can cause 
some problems.  I turned off the extra monitor temporarily, which 
earlier was with a separate X-session, and let it stay as twinview.

I'm really not sure what else to do.

I tried checking the Xorg.0.log and Xorg.0.old.log files, and found 
these lines to be the culprits, as far as I can tell:

[   133.643] (II) XKB: reuse xkmfile 
/var/lib/xkb/server-CA82093D38BFEAEF36BB4318AC0909BE2F4873AE.xkm
[   133.677] (II) XKB: reuse xkmfile 
/var/lib/xkb/server-F75717B5DC1D9E5AD41D47ADF6AC291462B6D055.xkm
[   133.687] (II) XKB: reuse xkmfile 
/var/lib/xkb/server-F75717B5DC1D9E5AD41D47ADF6AC291462B6D055.xkm
[   133.695] (II) XKB: reuse xkmfile 
/var/lib/xkb/server-F75717B5DC1D9E5AD41D47ADF6AC291462B6D055.xkm

[   122.862]
Backtrace:
[   122.862] 0: /usr/bin/X (xorg_backtrace+0x37) [0x80a66f7]
[   122.862] 1: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x62b3a) [0x80aab3a]
[   122.862] 2: (vdso) (__kernel_rt_sigreturn+0x0) [0xb77a340c]
[   122.862] 3: /usr/bin/X (doListFontsWithInfo+0xf3) [0x8072af3]
[   122.862] 4: /usr/bin/X (ProcessWorkQueue+0x2d) [0x80764dd]
[   122.862] 5: /usr/bin/X (WaitForSomething+0x5a) [0x80a3e5a]
[   122.862] 6: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x29ed2) [0x8071ed2]
[   122.862] 7: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x1c70c) [0x806470c]
[   122.862] 8: /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6 (__libc_start_main+0xf3) 
[0xb7468113]
[   122.862] 9: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x1ca21) [0x8064a21]
[   122.862] Segmentation fault at address (nil)
[   122.862]
Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting
[   122.862]

There's a similar entry in Xorg.1.log:

[   204.595] 0: /usr/bin/X (xorg_backtrace+0x37) [0x80a66f7]
[   204.595] 1: /usr/bin/X (0x8048000+0x62b3a) [0x80aab3a]
[   204.595] 2: (vdso) (__kernel_rt_sigreturn+0x0) [0xb778b40c]
[   204.595] 3: /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/xorg/extra-modules/nvidia_drv.so 
(0xb4fcb000+0xcab01) [0xb5095b01]
[   204.595] Segmentation fault at address (nil)
[   204.595]
Caught signal 11 (Segmentation fault). Server aborting
[   204.595]

But I don't know if it's the same problem as the first segfault.

If there's any more information which would help solve the issue, please 
let me know.  But I'd really like to get these programs working... it's 
been a bit frustrating.

Best Regards,

Don