***LINUX EXPERT HELP NEEDED! *** CKII crashes with segfault (Linux Ubuntu 13.10)

[yalex]

Hello

Just purchased Crusader Kings II via steam but the game crashes with a segfault. In addition, the forum process is extremely convoluted to be able to report technical issues.

Please advise what you require to get this fixed, otherwise please outline the steps to ensure a refund can be processed.

The console reports the following when I attempt to run Crusader Kings II:

Setting breakpad minidump AppID = 203770
Steam_SetMinidumpSteamID: Caching Steam ID: 76561198079017392 [API loaded no]
Segmentation fault
Game removed: AppID 203770 "Crusader Kings II", ProcID 6911

In reading other posts there were suggestions to modify settings.txt but this file does not exist on my system.

 

[AndrewT]

Refunds must come from the place you bought the game.

What video card do you have, and do you have the proprietary drivers for it and up to date? The open source drivers will never work with this game.

 

[yalex]

Hi Andrew,

Thanks for the reply, should have mentioned it earlier, but I am using the proprietary fglrx drivers for my laptop. The graphics card is an AMD Radeon Mobility HD 6570M/5700 Series graphics card. The version of the driver is 13.10 as per the Ubuntu 13.10 repositories.


Alex

 

[AndrewT]

The first thing to try is to run a Steam verify from within Steam, to make sure the files came down correctly.

Are there any files under /home/user/.paradoxinteractive/Crusader Kings II/ at all? If so zip up any non-0-byte files in /logs/ and post that archive here please.

At what exact stage for it crash? Do you see the launcher? If so, you then hit play and it crashes immediately? Or later in the loading process?

If the launcher crashes, or never runs, you can try manually running the game itself from the file system, which will be ck2 (not ck2game, confusingly - that's the launcher).

That aside, we'll need to use standard Linux techniques to look into the segfault. There is no known issue of this nature in the game; it is possible it's a game fault but more likely something in the setup/environment. What info can you gather on the segfault from the Linux logs?

 

[yalex]

Hi Andrew,

There is no directory for .paradoxinteractive under my user account. I see Crusader Kings II in the steam launcher and when I press Play it crashes immediately. I have verified the Steam fiiles and it confirmed they are valid.

I also tried without my dual screen setup and without the HDMI monitor, the game is continually crashing immediately. The output from kern.log is as follows:

kernel: [227575.495333] ck2[22186]: segfault at 14 ip 0000000008f13036 sp 00000000ff88b490 error 4 in ck2[8048000+1311000]


Thanks,

Alex

 

[AndrewT]

What I'm trying to get you to try is running the game without Steam. Exit Steam and find ./ck2 and just run that bare - it ought to run by itself.

It's not a monitor issue, the crash is when it tries to run the Launcher, it never gets to the game itself. What you could try is opting into the new 2.0.2.2 beta in Steam, see if that runs any better.

 

[yalex]

Andrew,

There is the same error when attempting to run Crusader Kings II outside of Steam:
Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Outside of the fault:
kernel: [121374.865778] ck2[27381]: segfault at 14 ip 0000000008f13036 sp 00000000ffd6f720 error 4 in ck2[8048000+1311000]

I have opted into the beta as per the beta thread but the segfault still occurs:

kernel: [121674.885937] ck2[28007]: segfault at 14 ip 0000000008f33356 sp 00000000ffa8d790 error 4 in ck2[8048000+133a000]


Alex

 

[AndrewT]

Ok, so the Launcher runs OK? It's only the game that crashes?

Can we run a few checks on your video subsystem please:

lspci -v
lshw -class display
grep "mem size" will result in something like this:

RADEON(0): mem size init: gart size :1fdff000 vram size: s:40000000 visible:f6f6000 where memory size is in hex after s:​

dmesg | grep drm


If the above doesn't reveal anything I don't really have anything more to suggest - I'm no actual Linux expert and this is not a known problem with the game itself. It's almost certainly a configuration issue or some other incompatibility in your system. We'd really need to gather a full dump and have it analysed by a Linux coder - I could try to get our devs to look at it (unusual for an issue that only one person is seeing) but do you have access to any resources along those lines?

 

[yalex]

Hi Andrew,

Not sure which launcher you refer to. Nothing loads with either Crusader Kings through steam or at the command prompt and typing ./ck2.


Output of lspci:
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Madison [Mobility Radeon HD 5730 / 6570M] (prog-if 00 [VGA controller])
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 1594
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 46
Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
Memory at c4000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
I/O ports at 4000
Expansion ROM at c4040000 [disabled] [size=128K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: fglrx_pci

Output of lshw -class display
*-display
description: VGA compatible controller
product: Madison [Mobility Radeon HD 5730 / 6570M]
vendor: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI]
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
version: 00
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuration: driver=fglrx_pci latency=0
resources: irq:46 memory:b0000000-bfffffff memory:c4000000-c401ffff ioport:4000(size=256) memory:c4040000-c405ffff

grep on Xorg.log to identify memory size:
fglrx(0): Video RAM: 1048576 kByte, Type: GDDR5

dmesg | grep drm
Returns no output

I do not have access to developer resources but am happy to send a full dump if you let me know what is required.


Alex

 

[AndrewT]

The Launcher is a separate program that runs from Steam, or you can execute it separately with ./ck2game . It's where you choose which DLCs and Mods you want to run this session. Can you run that manually please, I assume it crashes too?

If that and ./ck2 both crash, something very serious is wrong - those are completely separate apps. Quite what I do not know.

Memory at b0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M]
...
fglrx(0): Video RAM: 1048576 kByte, Type: GDDR5

I don't know what to make of that ... the game requires 1gb of Vram to run well, but lack of it won't cause a crash. And that's certainly nothing to do with Launcher crashing.

I was kinda hoping that one of our resident Linux experts would drop in here and offer some more informed help, down at this depth. Actually, I'll change the thread title to see if we can tempt them in.

 

[ChildeR]

The Launcher is a separate program that runs from Steam, or you can execute it separately with ./ck2game . It's where you choose which DLCs and Mods you want to run this session. Can you run that manually please, I assume it crashes too?

There's no ck2game on Linux, is there?

yalex, do you get a stack trace if you run ck2 from a terminal? It should give you one unless it crashes before the game can even set up a signal handler.

Note that if your GPU is 6570M, it's actually weaker than the system requirements (6750 is about twice as fast), although I doubt that's anything to do with the crash.

 

[AndrewT]

There's no Linux Launcher in EU4, but I thought there was in CK2 ... ? I don't have a Linux machine to hand to check, unfortunately, but if I'm wrong on that then I apologise to the OP for confusing him.

 

[yalex]

Hello

Apologies for the delay in following this up, but that is correct there's no ck2game file just ck2.

Childer: The terminal output is what I have posted earlier: Segmentation fault

With the logs stating the following:
kernel: [121674.885937] ck2[28007]: segfault at 14 ip 0000000008f33356 sp 00000000ffa8d790 error 4 in ck2[8048000+133a00

I have not had any issues regarding other games so there's no pattern that is immediately evident. If there's a way of enabling further traces let me know and I send the output.


Alex

 

[ChildeR]

Childer: The terminal output is what I have posted earlier: Segmentation fault

If segfault is the first and only thing it says, it indicates it's crashing before doing even the initial setup of signal handlers (if they run you get a backtrace on segfault). That might suggest it's a library problem outside the game, though no idea where.

You could try debugging with gdb: from the game directory run 'gdb ck2' and then 'r' and enter in the debugger (q quits). Might show you which library is to blame if the segfault is in library code.

If that doesn't help and you want to verify whether it's a GPU driver problem, you could temporarily switch to the open driver (disable fglrx from System Settings -> Software & Updates -> Additional Drivers, reboot or restart X). The radeon driver should run CK2 on Evergreen hardware if it works at all, although mobile GPUs are always a pain in my experience.

 

[yalex]

Thanks ChildeR

Output from gdb is as follows:
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x08f33356 in GetUserDir(char const*, char*, int) ()

The location of ck2 is: /home/likewise-open/SYNEKAMARKETING/alex/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Crusader Kings II/ck2

Let me know if this helps, otherwise will try the non proprietary AMD drivers.

You could try debugging with gdb: from the game directory run 'gdb ck2' and then 'r' and enter in the debugger (q quits). Might show you which library is to blame if the segfault is in library code.

If that doesn't help and you want to verify whether it's a GPU driver problem, you could temporarily switch to the open driver (disable fglrx from System Settings -> Software & Updates -> Additional Drivers, reboot or restart X). The radeon driver should run CK2 on Evergreen hardware if it works at all, although mobile GPUs are always a pain in my experience.

 

[bucaneer]

Thanks ChildeR

Output from gdb is as follows:
[Thread debugging using libthread_db enabled]
Using host libthread_db library "/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libthread_db.so.1".

Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x08f33356 in GetUserDir(char const*, char*, int) ()

The location of ck2 is: /home/likewise-open/SYNEKAMARKETING/alex/.local/share/Steam/SteamApps/common/Crusader Kings II/ck2

Let me know if this helps, otherwise will try the non proprietary AMD drivers.

Huh, perhaps the game is confused by the multi-level home directory. The devs once mentioned that the game (EU4, but I assume it's the same for CK2) uses PhysFS library for file handling. Looking at its source, it appears that when determining user's home directory it first looks at the $HOME environment variable and then, if it doesn't return a sensible answer, tries to determine it from the UID. So could you post the output of:

echo $HOME

and

grep $USER /etc/passwd

(the /etc/passwd file may contain personal infomation like address and phone number if you have those entered into the system - feel free to remove that from the output. The important parts are your username and home directory as written in that file.)

 

[yalex]

Thanks bucaneer:

This machine connections to a domain using likewise-open, hence the home directory layout.
Output of $HOME:
/home/likewise-open/SYNEKAMARKETING/alex

There is no output under grep $USER /etc/passwd, this would be because the usernames are set via the domain and not on the local machine.


Alex

 

[bucaneer]

There is no output under grep $USER /etc/passwd, this would be because the usernames are set via the domain and not on the local machine.

I've never run into Likewise-Open before, but I suspect this is the problem. I did some testing right now and it appears that CK2 ignores the $HOME environment variable and goes straight for the UID method. That is, if I start the game like this:

HOME=/home/test ./ck2

it still reads user settings from my regular home directory for this user and doesn't use /home/test as instructed.

Still, I assume that even if Likewise doesn't store information in /etc/passwd, it should still exist somewhere in working memory. Try running this:

python -c 'import os,pwd; print(pwd.getpwuid(os.getuid()))'

It should contain the same information as the /etc/passwd file, only accessed via a standard library call and presented in a different format. Theoretically, this should be the exact same information that the game tries to use.

 

[yalex]

Hi Bucaneer,

The crash is definitely caused by the UID method.

I created a local user and the game loads correctly. Output from python -c 'import os,pwd; print(pwd.getpwuid(os.getuid()))':

pwd.struct_passwd(pw_name='alex', pw_passwd='x', pw_uid=1544553574, pw_gid=1544552961, pw_gecos='', pw_dir='/home/likewise-open/SYNEKAMARKETING/alex', pw_shell='/bin/bash')

Is there a fix that can be applied to get the game working under my standard user environment?

 

[bucaneer]

Output from python -c 'import os,pwd; print(pwd.getpwuid(os.getuid()))':

pwd.struct_passwd(pw_name='alex', pw_passwd='x', pw_uid=1544553574, pw_gid=1544552961, pw_gecos='', pw_dir='/home/likewise-open/SYNEKAMARKETING/alex', pw_shell='/bin/bash')

I take it this is when using the regular user account, not the new local one? In that case, I'm really not sure what can be done. I was sort of hoping that "pw_dir" would be wrong in this output and that the problem could be fixed by symlinking the correct user directory, but it appears that everything is in order already. I tried reproducing the crash on my system by creating a new user with a long multilevel $HOME path and a large UID number (same as yours), but everything just works fine. I don't think I can help you any more: if you find switching users acceptable then continue using the local account you set up, otherwise consult somebody who knows more about the intricacies of Likewise.