[comp.sys.amiga.tech] Help! Weird "stack overflow" bug

mwandel@bnr-rsc.UUCP (Markus Wandel) (06/09/90)

Lately, I've been hit increasingly often by this extremely annoying bug.
What happens is that a Lattice compiled program bombs immediately on startup
with a "Stack Overflow" requester, and exits.  Only two programs have done
this to me:  The "tar" program from Usenet (recompiled with a version 5+
Lattice to apply the bug fix), and Edwin Hoogerbeets's cp/rm/mv program,
likely not the original binary but compiled with Lattice from the original
source.

The bug never shows up when only my primary hard disk partition is mounted.
It shows up sometimes when a second partition or other device is mounted,
and almost always when two or more additional things are mounted.

The programs never seem to bomb the first time they are run under a given set
of circumstances, but once they start they never run again until the system
is rebooted.  If one won't run, then the other won't either.

I can't imagine what this would have to do with it, but the above mentioned
additional mounted items are either FFS partitions with a homemade device
driver, or a tape system with a homemade handler and driver.

Has anyone else observed this behaviour?  Is there a particular version of
Lattice which produces programs exhibiting it?  Is there something obvious
I could be doing wrong?  Any help would be appreciated.  Please don't tell me
to increase my stack size; a program which normally works in 8K stack should
not suddenly need more than 100K, and I've tried going that far up.

Markus Wandel        ...!uunet!bnrgate!bnr-rsc!mwandel        (613) 591-7698
Working for, but in no way representing, Bell Northern Research.