#3527 maxima Segmentation Fault (Core Dump)

[Louis W. Adams, Jr.]

I installed maxima 5.41.0-3 on Ubuntu 18.04 (Gnome Shell) / Linux 4.18.0-14. When I run the command "maxima" from a terminal, after a few seconds I get the error "Segmentation fault (core dumped)". Now what do I do to get it working? I have not tried compiling it from source code hoping there is a simpler way to solve the problem. Let me know what I should provide to diagnose the problem.

[Robert Dodier]

Hi Louis, thanks for the bug report. By what means did you install Maxima?

To get some more debugging information, try: maxima --verbose which should print the commands which are being executed by the script which launches Maxima. Please run maxima --verbose and the copy the output into this bug report.

[Louis W. Adams, Jr.]

I really want to use wxMaxima, so my first attempt was to use the Ubuntu Software application to install it. When that didn't work (the GUI came up and looked like it wanted to display an error message but provided no details). I fully uninstalled wxMaxima (using Ubuntu Software), then tried installing Maxima alone using Ubuntu Software. No joy, so I again fully uninstalled the application. I recall trying at least two more times (this all happened a few weeks ago), but my memory fails me. I probably tried installing Maxima from Synaptic Package Manager, and I probably looked for a deb file on the maxima page of Source Forge, or maybe a package specifically for Ubuntu 18.04. I read about compiling Maxima from source, which I've done for other applications, but I wasn't ready at the time to try that. I tried putting the recommended PPA in Ubuntu's Software & Updates (tab Other Software), but I recieved an error message saying that a reference file was missing (some kind of security matter?). So that was a no-go.

I've used wxMaxima for several years prior to my installation of Ubuntu 18.04 last year on the same hardware, a System76 notebook:

CPU: Intel Core i7-4930MX @ 8x 3.9GHz [54.0°C]
GPU: GeForce GTX 780M
RAM: 3096MiB / 32126MiB

Attached is the output that you wanted, but it doesn't say much.

[Robert Dodier]

At this point the simplest way to ensure that you get a working Maxima is to compile it. That's actually pretty easy. I will help you with that if you want to go down that road. The steps are just:

$ tar xvzf maxima-5.mm.nn.tar.gz
$ cd maxima-5.mm.nn
$ sh ./bootstrap
$ ./configure --enable-sbcl
$ make
$ make install

assuming that you have downloaded a tarball from the Sourceforge files page (https://sourceforge.net/projects/maxima/files/Maxima-source/) and also installed SBCL by some means; I believe SBCL can be installed via apt-get.

However getting Maxima to work is only part of the story if you want wxMaxima. Building wxMaxima is more difficult, if I am not mistaken, and I don't have any advice about that.

[Gunter Königsmann]

"No reference file" most probably means that the ppa wasn't compiled for your ubuntu version. Which Ubuntu version are you using? If it is still a supported Ubuntu version please file a bug at https://github.com/wxMaxima-developers/wxmaxima/issues

...also if the build versions found at https://github.com/wxMaxima-developers don't work out-of-the-box please feel free to file a bug report there.

[Louis W. Adams, Jr.]

Since I wanted wxMaxima, and I had to compile the software anyway, I compiled wxMaxima from wxmaxima-Version-19.01.3.tar.gz following the instructions posted on https://github.com/wxMaxima-developers/wxmaxima/blob/master/Compiling.md. The compile went through without error after I met all required dependencies. I ran the maxima command from terminal and received the same error: "Segmentation fault (core dumped)".

I assume that when I compiled wxMaxima that it would have overwritten any previous install of maxima on my system, yes?

Suggestions?

[Gunter Königsmann]

wxMaxima is only a graphical front-end and doesn't come with its own maxima. But thanks to Elias there is a version of wxMaxima that contains maxima. Just download the following file, set its "executable" flag and execute it:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/maxima/files/Maxima-Linux/5.42.2-Linux/maxima%2BwxMaxima.AppImage/download

In any other case my questions would be: Which version of Ubuntu are you using? And are you using the 32 or the 64 bit version? And do you currently use the maxima version that came with ubuntu or the one from our download page?

[Louis W. Adams, Jr.]

Ubunt 18.04, Linux 4.18, 64 bit version, maxima from either Ubuntu Software or apt://maxima. Using either source for maxima gives me an installation of maxima with the segmentation fault. I'll try compiling maxima from source, and leave the current installation of wxMaxima alone.

[Louis W. Adams, Jr.]

I was following your instructions, and downloaded maxima-5.42.2.tar.gz, and extracted the files, but I can't execute "sh ./boostrap" because there is no such file. Now what do I do?

[Robert Dodier]

Sorry, I need to investigate a bit and get back to you. The instructions I gave are suitable for building from Git. I will have to determine the right way to build from a tarball. I apologize again for the bother.

EDIT: Please omit the first line, sh ./bootstrap, and then go ahead with all the following lines. Running the bootstrap script isn't needed when building from a tarball.

[Gunter Königsmann]

Found the solution: Just skip the

sh ./bootstrap

step. The autotools exclude the bootstrap file from the tarball and include the files "./bootstrap" generates instead as they (at least in theory) should be completely system-independent.

[Louis W. Adams, Jr.]

As Gunter suggested, I skipped the "bootstrap" call but "make" generated an error (see attached). I used Ubuntu's Synaptic Package Manager to install "texinfo" and then "make" executed error free (I think). And it looked like "make install" was successful. Now maxima runs without errors. I tested wxMaxima with a couple of my old maxima files and they executed perfectly.

Thank you Robert and Gunter!

I'll discuss the PPA problem in a separate posting.

[Gunter Königsmann]

makeinfo Is (at least I think) installed using the following command:

sudo apt install texinfo

If I was wrong here just try to start the missing program from the console and Ubuntu will tell you how it can be installed.

Diese Nachricht wurde von meinem Android-Gerät mit K-9 Mail gesendet.

[Gunter Königsmann]

Sorry for half of my message being displayed as a caption or so. ...the full list of dependencies you need on Ubuntu seems to be: sbcl, texinfo, libreadline-dev, locales, gawk or awk, texlive-latex-recommended, texlive-latex-base, python and gnuplot

[Gunter Königsmann]

that means: libreadline-dev might be unused if you build maxima using sbcl but I wasn't entirely sure...

[Robert Dodier]

Louis reported that he was able to get maxima working via make, and that he would make a separate bug report about PPA. Glad to hear you got it working, Louis, I'm closing this report. If you have other questions please feel free to make additional bug reports, or post a message to the maxima-discuss mailing list. See: https://sourceforge.net/projects/maxima/lists/maxima-discuss

[Germán Méndez González]

I discovered that my problem was the permissions of a file in /tmp

$strace maxima

openat(AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/gcl_pool", O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0644) = -1 EACCES (Permiso denegado)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/gcl_pool", O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0644) = -1 EACCES (Permiso denegado)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/gcl_pool", O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0644) = -1 EACCES (Permiso denegado)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/gcl_pool", O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0644) = -1 EACCES (Permiso denegado)
openat(AT_FDCWD, "/tmp/gcl_pool", O_RDWR|O_CREAT, 0644) = -1 EACCES (Permiso denegado)

SOLUTION:

sudo rm /tmp/gcl_pool