Re: weird error messages
On Thu 08 Feb 2001, Lerale Erwan wrote:
> > > Mar 11 16:11:33 hot kernel: snort(353): unaligned trap at 000000012000eb20: 0000000120069a5a 22 10
> > >
> > > I don't understand why these error messages are being generated.
> >
> > They are mostly harmless. It can, however, effect system
> > performance. snort and a few other apps need some work to make them
> > run correctly on Alpha. Hopefully Chris (hint hint) can fix snort
> > sometime this week as he and I both are getting them.
>
> Before switching to postfix, i was getting the same kind of error with smail :)
>
> Jan 17 10:42:49 debian kernel: smail(165): unaligned trap at 0000000120037b58: 000000012009251c 2d 0
It's because e.g. an 8-byte unit (such as a long or - more often -
a pointer) is being accessed at a non-8-byte aligned address
(e.g. 0x12345 instead of 0x12340 or 0x12348). Usually because of
bad programming, where a struct is copied into a block of memory
as a series of bytes, and then the "struct" in that block is
being used directly without first copying it into a properly
aligned "real" struct.
I'll see if I can have a look at snort for this; I prefer Chris
concentrate on gcc, binutils, libc6-1 (which needs to be rebuilt
with the latest kernel-headers, see bug #84238 :-)
Paul Slootman
--
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