OpenSCAD kept crashing on Ubuntu 16.04 with AMD drivers

After the upgrade of my computer's graphics card for a new AMD RX 460 I noticed OpenSCAD program was crashing all the time with a segmentation fault (every time I pressed F5 or F6). But the problem would only happen if I was using AMD native driver (amdgpu-pro). I saw no references online to this specific problem which was weird.

I decided to buy the RX 460 as it apparently had good Linux support, so it was odd to have this kind of problem but no matter what version of the driver I was using or what version of OpenSCAD nightly build I could not use the application. I managed to get an AppImage version that worked without a problem in my system and that is what I have been using for a while.

Today, I have decided to check if somehow problem could he related to my locale, so I invoked the application like this: LC_ALL=C openscad-nightly

And lo and behold, OpenSCAD is working as it should, no problem whatsoever. So it is clear that my Spanish locale was what caused the problem. I wish I have thought sooner about making this simple test.

Update: Oops, there is still something else, as csg example still crashes the program (time to try a stable release now).

Update2: Well, stable release is a compelte no-go.

Update3: When you discover that the crashes happening from command line are gone if program is run from gdb.  WTF? It turns out it is a "Heisenbug" (time-sensitive bug)

Update4: It started to work ok with 17.30 driver update.

Comments

merlucin said…
Perhaps there is some kind of system log that helps you to clarify the problem?

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