Thunderbird works no longer [Solved]

kde35 · 2018-10-25 10:09:12

Hi, it is been a while that I didn't use Thunderbird, so I can't tell you when this happened, but thunderbird stopped working. When
I try to start the current version, I get

Illegal instruction (core dumped)

Trying to use an older version gives, for example

XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /usr/lib/thunderbird/libxul.so:
libicui18n.so.56: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory

with 38.5.1-1, so reverting to older version doesn't seem to be a solution.
This is probably related to SSE2 issue. Any idea on possible work around?

Last edited by kde35 (2018-10-27 09:03:17)

levi · 2018-10-25 16:55:45

kde35 wrote:

I try to start the current version, I get
Illegal instruction (core dumped)

Yes, that seems likely to be another case of a too new isa being compiled in. Can you run lscpu and give us the flags it presents? For example, mine gives:

Flags:               fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush
dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts cpuid
aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 xtpr pdcm movbe lahf_lm dtherm

That's because this machine is running an Atom chip which has sse, sse2 and ssse3 (as well as older things like mmx and fpu). But the mainstream i686 era chips don't support ssse3, which to hazard a guess is your issue, but I'd need to see your flags to have more of an idea.

kde35 wrote:

Trying to use an older version gives, for example
XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /usr/lib/thunderbird/libxul.so:
libicui18n.so.56: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
with 38.5.1-1, so reverting to older version doesn't seem to be a solution.

Try downgrading libicui18n as well.

kde35 · 2018-10-26 20:23:28

levi wrote:

kde35 wrote:
I try to start the current version, I get
Illegal instruction (core dumped)
Yes, that seems likely to be another case of a too new isa being compiled in. Can you run lscpu and give us the flags it presents? For example, mine gives:
Flags:               fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat clflush
dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe nx constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts cpuid
aperfmperf pni dtes64 monitor ds_cpl est tm2 ssse3 xtpr pdcm movbe lahf_lm dtherm
That's because this machine is running an Atom chip which has sse, sse2 and ssse3 (as well as older things like mmx and fpu). But the mainstream i686 era chips don't support ssse3, which to hazard a guess is your issue, but I'd need to see your flags to have more of an idea.

Flags:                 fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca 
cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow cpuid 3dnowprefetch vm
mcall

These are the flags I get.

levi wrote:

kde35 wrote:
Trying to use an older version gives, for example
XPCOMGlueLoad error for file /usr/lib/thunderbird/libxul.so:
libicui18n.so.56: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
with 38.5.1-1, so reverting to older version doesn't seem to be a solution.
Try downgrading libicui18n as well.

libicui18n.so is owned by the package icu, on which many things depend, so I can't downgrade it without breaking the system, unfortunately Would there be way to get an older version of shared object file without installing the package?

levi · 2018-10-26 21:16:05

kde35 wrote:

Flags:                 fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca 
cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow cpuid 3dnowprefetch vm
mcall

These are the flags I get.

Ah, so no sse2 even. That's an impressively crufty chip! If the issue of the build tools building for things that are a little too new for many of us doesn't get resolved, you may need to investigate the i486 branch (although personally I doubt things like Thunderbird are available for that yet, although I've not checked).

kde35 wrote:

libicui18n.so is owned by the package icu, on which many things depend, so I can't downgrade it without breaking the system, unfortunately Would there be way to get an older version of shared object file without installing the package?

Of course, although we're definitely working around the protections pacman provides now. You can unpack any package file using bsdtar, so to unpack just libicui18n.so.56 do:

bsdtar -xJf /var/cache/pacman/pkg/icu-<version>.pkg.tar.xz usr/lib/linicui18n.so.56

That'll unpack the file to your current pwd, and I guess it might create usr and usr/lib folders there too. I'll leave it up to you to figure the best way to add this to your path.

Last edited by levi (2018-10-26 21:20:41)

kde35 · 2018-10-27 09:07:38

levi wrote:

kde35 wrote:
Flags:                 fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca 
cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow cpuid 3dnowprefetch vm
mcall
These are the flags I get.
Ah, so no sse2 even. That's an impressively crufty chip! If the issue of the build tools building for things that are a little too new for many of us doesn't get resolved, you may need to investigate the i486 branch (although personally I doubt things like Thunderbird are available for that yet, although I've not checked).
kde35 wrote:
libicui18n.so is owned by the package icu, on which many things depend, so I can't downgrade it without breaking the system, unfortunately Would there be way to get an older version of shared object file without installing the package?
Of course, although we're definitely working around the protections pacman provides now. You can unpack any package file using bsdtar, so to unpack just libicui18n.so.56 do:
bsdtar -xJf /var/cache/pacman/pkg/icu-<version>.pkg.tar.xz usr/lib/linicui18n.so.56
That'll unpack the file to your current pwd, and I guess it might create usr and usr/lib folders there too. I'll leave it up to you to figure the best way to add this to your path.

Thank you very much, I now got Thunderbird back. No. Thunderbird is not on i486. In any case, Debian folks solved this issue accoding to this page, so I would imagine that there should be a proper fix.

Last edited by kde35 (2018-10-27 09:08:05)

levi · 2018-10-27 16:35:08

Unfortunately, that link doesn't include a description of how they fixed it. My own experiments into setting up a cross compiler have currently stalled (I think I need to revist my target libs, but I don't have the brain bandwidth at the moment to tackle that), so I don't really deeply know what the problems people are having getting their build tools not to build new SSE things are, but as I understand it that's the core of the trouble.

andreas_baumann · 2018-10-27 20:08:28

Currently the i486 is stalled in librsvg/rust, without this X, Firefox, Thunderbird is out of reach.
We have to break some bootstrapping issues and some library cycles first. :-)

kde35 · 2018-10-31 10:43:33

Downgrading solved the issue only temporarily. Thunderbird crashes again. Just in case it is because of the profile, I created a new user account on the computer, and launched thunderbird
from that account. The result is that the first time it crashed during the e-mail account configuration, the second time it crashed right before. On console, there is just these outputs.

[calBackendLoader] Using Thunderbird's builtin libical backend
Illegal instruction (core dumped)

It seems that to avoid other problems, I should stop upgrading system. But how do I get back an operational system? I never really backed up the system, except when I installed it with slightly different configuration two years ago. Should I restore this backup and then roll on from there using the packages in the cache until things get broken?

Arch Linux

#1 2018-10-25 10:09:12

Thunderbird works no longer [Solved]

#2 2018-10-25 16:55:45

Re: Thunderbird works no longer [Solved]

#3 2018-10-26 20:23:28

Re: Thunderbird works no longer [Solved]

#4 2018-10-26 21:16:05

Re: Thunderbird works no longer [Solved]

#5 2018-10-27 09:07:38

Re: Thunderbird works no longer [Solved]

#6 2018-10-27 16:35:08

Re: Thunderbird works no longer [Solved]

#7 2018-10-27 20:08:28

Re: Thunderbird works no longer [Solved]

#8 2018-10-31 10:43:33

Re: Thunderbird works no longer [Solved]

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