Bug#578270: xserver-xorg-video-radeon: X crash (back to gdm login) when loading compiz

[Michael Schmitt <tcwardrobe@gmail.com>]

Hi folks,

Julien, Brice, thanks for the fast reply, even if I was gone by the time
the mails arrived :)
But that was luck for me I guess, as otherwise I would have probably
"wasted" some time trying to get some not helpful backtraces, but let's
see.

It seems X only crashes and drops one back to gdm login if compiz is
started after another WM (at least metacity) was run and compiz replaces
it. I did create a separate gnome+compiz session for gdm which does set
$WINDOW_MANAGER to "compiz" and run gnome-session afterwards. This
works! Gnome is started and Compiz is working as it should. I tested it
several times with the normal gnome session and this slightly modified
session it was always the same. This suggests when metacity is somewhat
killed (as it is when compiz replaces it) the complete X session ends.
So this is more or less a normal X shutdown, hence no crash indications
in Xorg log.

So I guess this is rather not a xserver-xorg-video-radeon issue but
apart from that right now I don't know what package to blame. I tried
running metacity --replace and compiz --replace afterwards in the gnome
+compiz session and all worked as expected without a X shutdown. First
metacity replaced compiz and then compiz replaced metacity, no issues
there. Only when metacity is run automatically in the regular
gnome-session first before compiz replaces it the weird "X shutdown"
happens. So no idea if the bug is in metacity or some gnome stuff or
somewhere else, but at least I don't think it is a user-configuration
issue as another guy I talked to on IRC (#debian.de@IRCNet, Eduard
Bloch, kudos to him and some other guy there) has the same issue.

So, what do you suggest now? At least I have a completely working
solution now, but I guess there is a bug somewhere which should not get
along unpunished! ;-)

regards
Michael