I used Gaim and I compiled it myself. The latest version, 2.0.0 beta 6, looks very promising in term of user interface improvement. However, I got some serious issue which Gaim will crash occasionally without reason. Actually, I didn't know the reason since it was likely to occur randomly. So I decided to trace this issue by forcing Gaim to inject a core dump whenever it crashed. As a result, I have found the source of this error.

#0  0xb7f298e0 in _gst_parse_yylex () from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
(gdb) bt
#0  0xb7f298e0 in _gst_parse_yylex () from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#1  0xb7f2bddd in _gst_parse__yyparse () from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#2  0xb7f2e966 in _gst_parse_launch () from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#3  0xb7f227a8 in gst_parse_launch () from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#4  0xb7f14d5b in gst_parse_bin_from_description ()
   from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#5  0xb515970b in gst_gconf_render_bin_from_key ()
   from /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgconfelements.so
#6  0xb51599f5 in gst_gconf_get_default_audio_sink ()
   from /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgconfelements.so
#7  0xb5156c64 in gst_gconf_audio_sink_get_type ()
   from /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgconfelements.so
#8  0xb51571b5 in gst_gconf_audio_sink_get_type ()
   from /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstgconfelements.so
#9  0xb7ee216a in gst_element_continue_state ()
   from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#10 0xb7ee5196 in gst_element_release_request_pad ()
   from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#11 0xb7ee12f3 in gst_element_set_state () from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#12 0xb7ed6a72 in gst_bin_add () from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#13 0xb7ee216a in gst_element_continue_state ()
   from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#14 0xb7ee5196 in gst_element_release_request_pad ()
   from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#15 0xb7ee12f3 in gst_element_set_state () from /usr/lib/libgstreamer-0.10.so.0
#16 0xb50f08f9 in ?? () from /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstplaybin.so
#17 0x08875450 in ?? ()
#18 0x00000002 in ?? ()
#19 0x0885eaf0 in ?? ()
#20 0xb50fca94 in ?? () from /usr/lib/gstreamer-0.10/libgstplaybin.so
#21 0x00000000 in ?? ()

As you might notice, everything we see is all from gstreamer. Note that I was using Automatic sound method in preferences. I guess that there are some incompatibility issue between Gaim and gstreamer so I tried to solve this problem by switching to ESD sound method instead.

Fortunately, my guess was correct. Gaim has never crashed since that time.

Tags: gaim, ubuntu, gstreamer, esound