Sleuthing X windows bug in Ubuntu Gutsy

On Fri, 28 Mar 2008, Tim Keitt wrote:

 > I'm trying to see if I can track down a bug in X windows that causes
 > it to crash when plotting (I believe) very small filled polygons (or
 > it may have to do with large numbers of polygons). I first noticed
 > this running QGIS. Loading a PostGIS layer with ~3K polygons will
 > cause X to abort. I can load the layer if I have already zoomed into a
 > smaller region of the coverage. Once I try to zoom out to the full
 > extent, X dies.
 >
 > So I tried loading the polygons into "sp" using "readOGR" which works
 > great. I could then plot the polygons, no problem. But when I called
 > "spplot" which I believe fills the polygons, same problem. X crashes.
 >
 > Can anyone confirm this behavior? Try plotting a large number of
 > polygons with spplot and also try very small polygons (less than a
 > pixel size). I can send around the shapefile if anyone is interested.
 > It contains GSHHS coastlines for Micronesia.

 I can't reproduce any problems on

 http://www.census.gov/geo/cob/bdy/co/co00shp/co99_d00_shp.zip

 library(rgdal)
 usc <- readOGR(".", "co99_d00")
 # OGR data source with driver: ESRI Shapefile
 # Source: ".", layer: "co99_d00"
 # with  3489  rows and  9  columns
 plot(usc, col=rainbow(52)[usc$state1])
 spplot(usc, "STATE", col.regions=rainbow(52))

 and:

 $ xdpyinfo
 name of display:    :0.0
 version number:    11.0
 vendor string:    The X.Org Foundation
 vendor release number:    60802000
 X.Org version: 6.8.2
 ...
 screen #0:
   dimensions:    1280x1024 pixels (361x271 millimeters)
   resolution:    90x96 dots per inch
   depths (7):    16, 1, 4, 8, 15, 24, 32

 Could you please make your file available - maybe there is something
 particular about it? Is there way of asking X which driver it is using
 (here nvidia proprietary for Legacy GPU version (1.0-71xx series), full
 details in /proc/driver/nvidia)?

 Roger

 >
 > THK
 >
 >

 --
 Roger Bivand
 Economic Geography Section, Department of Economics, Norwegian School of
 Economics and Business Administration, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen,
 Norway. voice: +47 55 95 93 55; fax +47 55 95 95 43
 e-mail: Roger.Bivand at nhh.no