Re: [Gnash-dev] how to troubleshoot? (gnash on NetBSD)

[Rob Savoye]

Jeremy C. Reed wrote:

> I wasn't able to get any flash to work. Some partially drew some output. 
> Some hung. I could right click and get the gnash menu, but couldn't run or 
> hear anything. firefox became sluggish and then unusable.

  Usually these types of problems are related to issues with the
libraries Gnash depends on, or a build problem. It's also useful to
attempt to duplicate bugs running Gnash standalone, as it leaves out
potential issues with Firefox.

> I saw I had a gtk-gnash.core core dump, but my corresponding binary was 
> strip and then I looked in source and saw it was not built with -g for 
> debugging symbols and strips the binaries.

  You can force Gnash to be built with debugging. Although you can mix
this with optimizing, it can make the stack dumps more cryptic.
Configure Gnash for debugging by adding "CXXFLAGS=-g" when configuring,
or when compiling. Either way it'll override the defaults.

  When you have odd problems it's good to try different optimizer
levels, as some bugs only appear at certain levels. That can at the
least determine if it's a tool chain problem. Also when running on a
64bit architecture, new problems may appear, not necessarily in Gnash,
but in one of the dependent libraries.

> - what debug levels and settings for my ~/.gnash*rc files?

  Usually you set GNASH_OPTIONS=writelauncher in your environment, and
rerun Gnash with "-vv" for the most output. This is usually less helpful
for performance related bugs like you mention than it is for tracking
down compatibility issues.

> - what tests should I run? How to use testsuite?

  "make check", standard GNU style. Running the testsuite, which is very
useful, requires installing another pile of dependencies, not all of
which are easily available for NetBSD. I built up my NetBSD machine's
testing dependencies from source, your mileage may vary...

        - rob -