Arch Linux

schef

Member

Registered: 2009-04-16

Posts: 71

X Error of failed request: BadAtom (invalid Atom parameter)

Hello, when i run a application named

./energyXT

from web page http://www.energy-xt.com/ sometimes i get an error like

X Error of failed request:  BadAtom (invalid Atom parameter)
  Major opcode of failed request:  18 (X_ChangeProperty)
  Atom id in failed request:  0x0
  Serial number of failed request:  165
  Current serial number in output stream:  166

and sometimes i don't.
Can someone pleas help me to find a fix for my problem. I use i686 Arch with 2.6.37 kernel.
The most mysterious thing is that i had that problem before and then it disappeared and yesterday it came back.
Any direction where to look would be helpfull..

Thanks.

monotiz

Member

Registered: 2007-10-20

Posts: 140

Re: X Error of failed request: BadAtom (invalid Atom parameter)

I've got the same error with libreoffice:

The program 'soffice' received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was 'BadAtom (invalid Atom parameter)'.
  (Details: serial 188 error_code 5 request_code 17 minor_code 0)
  (Note to programmers: normally, X errors are reported asynchronously;
   that is, you will receive the error a while after causing it.
   To debug your program, run it with the --sync command line
   option to change this behavior. You can then get a meaningful
   backtrace from your debugger if you break on the gdk_x_error() function.)

monotiz

Member

Registered: 2007-10-20

Posts: 140

Re: X Error of failed request: BadAtom (invalid Atom parameter)

I've got the same error in another machine.

EDIT: If I run libreoffice from GNOME there isn't error.... I've got the error only from WMFS

Last edited by monotiz (2012-03-29 13:59:57)

sahinakkaya

Member

Registered: 2024-01-03

Posts: 1

Re: X Error of failed request: BadAtom (invalid Atom parameter)

I know this is too old but I am writing to share my observations and hopefully we would know what is causing this and fix it (in the future probably)

sometimes i get an error like [...] and sometimes i don't.

I get the same behaviour as OP. And I know exactly when it happens. If I login to a wayland session, I get the exact same error while running Glava (An audio spectrum visualizer written specifically for X). If I logout from my wayland session and login to an X session, I can run glava without any problem. And when I logout from my X session and login to wayland again, I can run glava without any problems (surprise!).

So the problem is originating from some environment variable not set when the target program runs (at least for me).

Do I know how to debug the issue? No :( So my workaround is logging out and starting an X session then logging back in to wayland if I really want to run glava.