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Re: Assorted Bus Errors - common problem?



"Assorted"?  There's more than one kind?  Perhaps "myriad" or "unusual"?

On Thu, Mar 14, 2002 at 07:19:00AM -0500, MIke Culbertson wrote:
>[...]
> The general question I am asking is whether or not these bus errors are a
> common sparc/linux related problem, or if it is something uncommon that may
> be related to a specific configuration/software version/kernel.  I would
> just as soon see if this is a core problem with sparc/linux before I clutter
> the lists with 100 strace outputs.  I will, however, be more than happy to
> provide any info if someone wants to see it.  Thanks in advance.

I'm fairly new to sparc, but I hope my advice isn't completely useless.
First, I'll assume you don't have any hardware problems (bad memory,
overheating, et cetera).

No, it's not a problem that is endemic to all architectures, and I haven't
seen it personally in a while.  I don't know what word-size your CPU has,
but I'll assume it's 64-bit for the moment.  I suggest that the programs
you're using (or libraries that the programs use) arent 64-bit safe, and
they might be asking the system for memory at an offset that doesn't fall
along a word boundry.  Thus, a SIGBUS.

Finally, debugging information would help, but strace is useless in this
respect -- it will only show system calls, and if one of those were causing
a SIGBUS, you'd be in deeper trouble.  Instead,  find a situation in which
you can reproduce an error, and apt-get the source of it, confirm you can
reproduce it there, with debuging symbols turned on.  Then, run it from
'gdb'.  When it fails, list a 'backtrace' and tell us about it.  If it
fails in a library function, get the source of that library, too.  Rince.
Repeat.

There may be some architecture-specific voodoo that I don't know, which
will help, about which I'll defer to anyone else here.

							- chad


-- 
Chad Miller <cmiller@surfsouth.com>
<url: http://www.advogato.org/person/cmiller/>
  ``Having a smoking section in a restaurant is 
    like having a peeing section in a pool.''



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