I’ve been hit by bug #345131 since updating to the latest xorg-server [7.2-143.9] security update on my openSUSE 10.3 installation. xorg-server version 7.2-143.6 to 7.2-143.9.

VLC, Filezilla and a few other applications stopped working. The bug has something to do with the X Window shared memory (MIT-SHM) overflowing.

My error,

The program ‘Filezilla’ received an X Window System error.
This probably reflects a bug in the program.
The error was ‘BadAlloc (insufficient resources for operation)’.
(Details: serial 1072 error_code 11 request_code 147 minor_code 5)
(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.)

Few hours of Googling and experimenting later I found my fix. 3  actually.

  1. Edit your /etc/xorg.conf file and add the below to the “Extensions” section. This fixed some issues but not all. My Kaffeine decided to stop working following this method.

Section “Extensions”
Option “MIT-SHM” “no”
EndSection

  1. Downgrade back to the previous version [7.2-143.6] of xorg-server. This will come with quite a few dependency warnings so be prepared to work through them. Worked for me but look at option 3 as it’s the best one.

  2. Download and install the Beta fix xorg-server [7.2-143.10] from Novell from here. This one worked best for me.

Source: Novell Bugzilla SUSE Beta