Pidgin 2.10.6 libc-2.15.so Segfault Workaround

Pidgin Segfault Workaround

Today when I turned on my computer, Pidgin would not start. I normally prefer writing a more complete blog post, and I wish I had more to tell viewers but all I know is a (complex?) workaround that worked for me.

Pidgin won’t start. So I run it through command line. Get the message “Segfault”. Run it with the --debug switch. Get more info, but nothing conclusive. Check logs, find kernel describing a library problem with libc.

[   57.444660] pidgin[2211]: segfault at 0 ip 00007fc78073966a sp 00007fffee194710 error 4 in libc-2.15.so[7fc7806af000+1b3000]

Okay, that's bad but my system updated libc a week ago. Why the problem now? Try for a while but can't discover exact cause of problem.

My solution? Compile Pidgin myself, to see if that will fix the problem. Short answer: Yes, that fixed the problem.

I enabled software-sources in my apt-repository list, ran apt-get build-dep pidgin, manually download the pidgin source and compiled that sucker. Works fine, and I could remove all the extra packages installed by the apt-get build-dep move, with the exception of libfarstream, which is how Pidgin does it's sound.