[news.software.b] Problems with inews at patch 13

paul@devon.UUCP (12/04/87)

After applying patch 13 to my 2.11 sources (which were stable at patch 12),
I encountered the following problem:

    % postnews
    Is this message in response to some other message? n
    Subject: Test
    Keywords: Test
    Newsgroups (enter one at a time, end with a blank line):

    The most relevant newsgroup should be the first, you should
    add others only if your article really MUST be read by people
    who choose not to read the appropriate group for your article.
    But DO use multiple newsgroups rather than posting many times.

    For a list of newsgroups, type ?
    > local.test
    > 
    Distribution (default='local', '?' for help) : 
[ test article edited here ]
    What now?  [send, edit, list, quit, write, append] s
    Posting article...
    Article not posted - exit status 139

Exit status 139 (128 & 11) would be signal 11 (SIGSEGV).
Here is the article I was attempting to post:

    % cat /tmp/post008025
    Subject: Test
    Newsgroups: local.test
    Distribution: local
    Keywords: test

    This is a test

    %

Using ADB, I see that the cause of the problem is a call to free() with
a 0 (or NULL) value:

    % adb dist/src/inews core 
    $c
    _ngfchec+3292:	_free	(0x0)
    _insert+100:	_ngfchec(0x139A4, 0x0, 0x0)
    _main+3632:		_insert	()
    start+58:		_main	(0x0, 0x13666)
    $r
    d0	    0x0			a0	0x1007E
    d1	    0x0			a1	0xFA7E
    d2	    0x3			a2	0x0
    d3	    0x0			a3	0xD01E
    d4	    0x1			a4	0xDAF7
    d5	    0x1			a5	0xFFFFFFFC
    d6	    0xA			a6	0xF93E
    d7	    0x0			sp	0xF93A

    ps	    0x8
    pc	    0x8127EA	_free+24:	bclr	#0x0,d0
    $q
    %

This is on a Tandy 6000 (an MC68000 machine) running Xenix 3.2.  This
is the first patch I've applied to the news software that has given
me any trouble.  My temporary solution is to run inews from patch 12.

Is this an old problem that has resurfaced, or did I do something
wrong?

- paul

-- 
Paul Sutcliffe, Jr.

UUCP (smart):  paul@devon.UUCP
UUCP (dumb):   ...{rutgers,ihnp4,cbosgd}!bpa!vu-vlsi!devon!paul

pleasant@rutgers.rutgers.edu (Mel Pleasant) (12/04/87)

> After applying patch 13 to my 2.11 sources (which were stable at patch 12),
> I encountered the following problem:
>
> ... output from adb ...
>
> Is this an old problem that has resurfaced, or did I do something wrong?


You haven't done anything wrong.  There is a problem that I introduced
(gulp!) in patch #13 which causes it to bomb on SysV based Unix
systems.  Apparently, a free() call given a NULL pointer on BSD
systems simply returns.  On SysV based Unix Systems, a NULL pointer
argument causes a core dump.

Patch #14 has just been released.  You'll find it in this newsgroup.
This patch, which does not contain any major new features, fixes the
known problems introduced in patch #13 and therefore should be as
stable as patch #12 was.....
-- 

-Mel Pleasant
uucp:   {ames, cbosgd, harvard, moss, seismo}!rutgers.edu!pleasant
arpa:   PLEASANT@RUTGERS.EDU