[news.software.b] 2.11 vnews core dumps when reply/followup tried

rjnoe@uniq.UUCP (Roger J. Noe) (11/17/86)

Environment is a PDP-11/44 running UNIX System V Release 2.0.  When trying
the 'r' or 'f' commands in vnews, I get the error message "Memory fault -
core dump".  Before trying to debug the code myself, I'd like to see who
else might be having this problem.  Just for information, the localize.sh
script I used is appended to this article.

Another thing about vnews in 2.11 that I don't like is that it removes your
old .newsrc file and creates a new one - with the current real user and
groups id's and mode controlled by N_UMASK in defs.h.  It doesn't preserve
the i-node information left in the old .newsrc.
	Roger Noe			ihnp4!uniq!rjnoe
	Uniq Digital Technologies	(312) 879-1566
	28 South Water Street
	Batavia, Illinois  60510

**localize.sh**
rm -f Makefile
cp Makefile.dst Makefile
chmod u+w Makefile
ed - Makefile  <<'EOF'
g/^#USG /s///
g/^#V7 /d
g/^#VMS /d
g/^#BSD4_[123] /d
g/^TERMLIB/s/-ltermlib/-lcurses/
g/^HOME/s/^/#/
g/^UUXFLAGS/s/-r -z//
g/^SCCSID/s/^/#/
g/^CFLAGS/s/$/ -Dvoid=int/
w
q
EOF
rm -f defs.h
cp defs.dist defs.h
chmod u+w defs.h
ed - defs.h <<'EOF'
/ROOTID/s/10/128/
/N_UMASK/s/000/002/
/HISTEXP/s/4/2/
/DFLTSUB/s/"[^"]*"/"all"/
/TMAIL/s,^,/\* ,
/PAGE/s,/usr/ucb/more,/usr/local/bin/more,
/NOTIFY/s/usenet/news/
/DFTXMIT/s/-r -z //
/UXMIT/s,^,/\* ,
/SPOOLNEWS/s,/\* ,,
/INTERNET/s,/\* ,,
/UNAME/s,/\* ,,
/DIGPAGE/s,^,/\* ,
/MYORG/s/"[^"]*"/"Uniq Digital Technologies, Batavia, IL"/
/NICENESS/s,/\* ,,
s/4/2/
/SMALL_ADDRESS_SPACE/s,/\* ,,
w
q
EOF

rfa4468@ritcv.UUCP (Robert F. Armstrong) (11/19/86)

We've been having similar problems with readnews 2.10.3 and 2.11
on an 11/70 running 2.9BSD. It doesn't dump core only when replying, 
though. It'll also do it occaisonally when one tries to quit. But, it's
favorite trick seems to be that it just hangs on you, with no recourse save
^Z and a kill.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
-Robert Armstrong,        seismo!rochester!ritcv!rfa4468  or
 Computer Science House,  seismo!rochester!rticv!ritcsh!boba
 Rochester Institute of
 Technology

rjnoe@uniq.UUCP (Roger J. Noe) (12/04/86)

> Environment is a PDP-11/44 running UNIX System V Release 2.0.  When trying
> the 'r' or 'f' commands in vnews, I get the error message "Memory fault -
> core dump".

What was happening is that our little 64K of data space was filling up whenever
vnews had to exec any other program and so a segmentation violation would kill
the process and dump core.  This is for the shell escape (!), replies (r, R,
and M-r) and follow-up (f).

By the time you input one of these commands, the stack of functions is like
main() -> readr() -> vcmd() -> docmd().  If it's '!' or 'f', then shcmd()
will be called next, otherwise reply() or direct_reply(), as the case may be.
All of these call prun() which, if it's a non-background job, will first
attempt to call botscreen(), which calls _amove(), which eventually calls
_hmove().  It's at this point that my machine bombs.  I think things would
probably be OK if the botscreen() and signal setting for non-background jobs
were done back in docmd() rather than waiting until you're way down in prun().
(By the way, these functions are in visual.c and virtterm.c.)  For now, I think
I'll just use readnews for replies and followups.  What a disappointment!
	Roger Noe			ihnp4!uniq!rjnoe
	Uniq Digital Technologies	(312) 879-1566
	Batavia, Illinois  60510	41:51:10 N.  88:18:25 W.