Re: x11/xscreensaver 2026Q1 locks and no login

[Ramiro Aceves <ea1abz%gmail.com@localhost>]

Hello,

Today is Sunday and as I expected, xscreensaver is working fine again. It confirms the weekly pattern failure!

After compiling xscreensaver to include debugging symbols I have been trying to use
gdb to discover where it fails but it has been impossible for me. It appears than
xscreensaver calls xscreensaver-auth to unlock the screen and it crashes there. I
do not know how to inspect that scenario under gdb. If I load xscreensaver in GDB
and it calls xscreensaver-auth and crashes there, I do not see anything. I do not
have enough expertise to do it properly. Any hints will be appreciated.

From xscreensaver log:

...
...

xscreensaver-gfx: 18:25:20: fading...
xscreensaver-gfx: 18:25:20: loaded screenshot 0x1c00007 for window 0x1c00001 1920x1080+0+0 from saved 0x1c00005 1920x1080
xscreensaver: 18:25:22: authorizing (motion)
xscreensaver: 18:25:22: pid 21705: launched xscreensaver-auth --verbose
xscreensaver-auth: 18:25:22: initial effective uid/gid was root/users (0/100)
xscreensaver-auth: 18:25:22: changed uid/gid to ramiro/users (1000/100)
xscreensaver-auth: 18:25:22: running as user "ramiro"
xscreensaver-auth: 18:25:22: pwnam: non-PAM password auth
xscreensaver-auth: 18:25:22: mouse is at 1448,601 on monitor 0 1920x1080+0+0 "DP1"
xscreensaver-auth: 18:25:22: theme: default
xscreensaver-auth: 18:25:22: kbd layout: Spanish
xscreensaver-auth: 18:25:22: attached input method

xscreensaver: 18:25:22: pid 21705: xscreensaver-auth exited with signal 11

xscreensaver: 18:25:22: authorization failed
xscreensaver: 18:25:23: authorizing (motion)
xscreensaver: 18:25:23: pid 23189: launched xscreensaver-auth --verbose
xscreensaver-auth: 18:25:23: initial effective uid/gid was root/users (0/100)
xscreensaver-auth: 18:25:23: changed uid/gid to ramiro/users (1000/100)
xscreensaver-auth: 18:25:23: running as user "ramiro"
...
...

For me there is absolutely no problem in running xscreensaver with "C" locale, but it is
interesting to understand where it fails. I am thinking that perhaps the author is the
only person that may understand it better, but in his WEB page he tells that:

"If you are reporting a bug in any version earlier than 6.16 then you are probably
wasting your time and mine. So please, I implore you, upgrade first. "

NetBSD uses 6.15 version, which is far more modern than 6.09 in Debian Trixie, even in Debian Unstable!
I do not want to try to manually change to 6.16 in pkgsrc, there are patches involved and
I do not have enough expertise to do that and I will enter in another problem.


Thanks.
Ramiro.