xterm (actually all Xt clients) does not run

By the way, arm-ports-ubuntu is a mirror of ports.ubuntu.com. I have checked that this is up to date.
In any case, the problem described in this bug report has been happening for some time.

Hmm that's weird; could you check your .xsession-errors? Does this happen in an empty session running just xterm?

How to you start your session? GDM?

This happens within GDM, in a raw X server, and also over remote X to a Cygwin/X server.

So it looks more like some issue with the X clients or Xt, rather than an X-server specific issue or an issue specific to running a particular kind of session...

Could you please attach your ~/.xsession-errors?

Sample X session errors attached.

At least one other guy on my side has seen the problem... it would be interesting to know whether anyone else can reproduce it.

I enabled IPv6 support in the kernel just to see whether there's a difference...
This removes the ICE errors from the log, but otherwise there no change. Oh well, it was a long shot :(

Found a possibly relevant thread - sounds like there could be issues between some Xt functionality and shared libraries.
However, I don't understand the detail, and it's possible these issues do not apply to ELF platforms.

http://www.cygwin.com/ml/cygwin-xfree/2003-10/msg00000.html

I have the same issue with Jaunty on the SheevaPlug platform (ARM little-endian) using the Xtightvnc VNC server and ICE window manager - xterm and many other X utilities fail to launch from the remote desktop and generate "Unresolved inheritance operation" errors in .xsession-errors log each time a launch is attempted:

xterm: generates
"xterm Xt error: Unresolved inheritance operation"

xclock: generates
"Error: Unresolved inheritance operation"

I upgraded libXt using apt-get upgrade libXt, but this had no effect on the problem.

On my platform, rebuilding libXt (on the target platform) seems to solve the problem; the X apps then launch without problem. So this suggests it's a problem with the libXt library.

I tried rebuilding libxt under babbage:
% LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PWD/debian/tmp/usr/lib/ ldd /usr/bin/xterm
% LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$PWD/debian/tmp/usr/lib/ xterm
xterm Xt error: Unresolved inheritance operation

didn't help

But the fact it did for Jon is an interesting indication; Jon, what is your platform?

It could be a toolchain issue; perhaps we can compare config.log.

The only bit of assembler I could find in libXt and which could be arch specific is:
asm (".data\n\
 .globl __XtInherit \n\
 __XtInherit: jmp *_y \n\
  _y: .long ___XtInherit \n\
    .text \n");
and it touches the "inheritance" logic apparently, but it's only for CYGWIN.

I tried rebuilding with -march=armv4t, but it didn't help either.

I also tried clearing LDFLAGS of -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions; didn't help either.

Julien Cristau helpfully pointed out that xterm was setgid and hence LD_LIBRARY_PATH wouldn't work, and indeed my rebuilds of libxt with -march=armv4t and without LDFLAGS both work if I copy xterm to a new binary without the setgid flag; thanks!

I'll try a simple rebuild now.

Sorry, my testing was incorrect in the previous comment; ALL arches are affected, the issue is with LDFLAGS -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions and a simple rebuild on amd64 shows the same bug.

I uploaded this debdiff to jaunty, pending approval. Fixes the issue on amd64 and armel for me.

Loic,
- my platform is the SheevaPlug with Marvell PXA 168 "Sheeva" processor - though interestingly it lists as an ARM926 in the kernel log:
      CPU: ARM926EJ-S [56251311] revision 1 (ARMv5TE), cr=00053177
      Machine: Feroceon-KW
- gcc version is 4.3.3 (Ubuntu 4.3.3-5ubuntu4)
- version of libXt built is 1.0.5 - and it was built _without_ applying patch libxt_1.0.5-3.diff

I'm attaching my config.log for comparison. Let me know if there's any other info you'd like.

Jon, thanks, it's not platform specific; probably it didn't happen in your rebuild because your dpkg-dev doesn't set LDFLAGS like the Ubuntu one.

This bug was fixed in the package libxt - 1:1.0.5-3ubuntu1

---------------
libxt (1:1.0.5-3ubuntu1) jaunty; urgency=low

  * Drop -Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions from LDFLAGS as it conflicts with the Xt
    inheritance mechanism; LP: #343574.

 -- Loic Minier <email address hidden> Sat, 11 Apr 2009 14:41:17 +0200