[plug] Debian puzzle, very weird (strace sync)

[Leon Brooks]

On Monday 07 April 2003 19:52, James Devenish wrote:
> In message <200304071935.58882.leon at brooks.fdns.net>
>> Machine A segfaults on sync or df, but not grep,

> Segfaults on sync? Can you get stack traces from Linux core dumps? Here
> is GNU fileutils' sync.c code:

> Copyright (C) 1994-2001 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> ...
>   program_name = argv[0];
>   setlocale (LC_ALL, "");
>   bindtextdomain (PACKAGE, LOCALEDIR);
>   textdomain (PACKAGE);
>
>   atexit (close_stdout);
>
>   parse_long_options (argc, argv, PROGRAM_NAME, PACKAGE, VERSION,
>               AUTHORS, usage);
>
>   if (argc != 1)
>     error (0, 0, _("ignoring all arguments"));
>
>   sync ();
>   exit (0);
> ...

strace sync
execve("/bin/sync", ["sync"], [/* 13 vars */]) = 0
uname({sys="Linux", node="mafeking", ...}) = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x804aeec
open("/etc/ld.so.preload", O_RDONLY)    = -1 ENOENT (No such file or 
directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY)      = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=31597, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 31597, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x40014000
close(3)                                = 0
open("/lib/libc.so.6", O_RDONLY)        = 3
read(3, "\177ELF\1\1\1\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\3\0\3\0\1\0\0\0\30\222"..., 1024) = 
1024
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0755, st_size=1153784, ...}) = 0
old_mmap(NULL, 1166560, PROT_READ|PROT_EXEC, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0x4001c000
mprotect(0x4012f000, 40160, PROT_NONE)  = 0
old_mmap(0x4012f000, 24576, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED, 3, 
0x113000) = 0x4012f000
old_mmap(0x40135000, 15584, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, 
MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_FIXED|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0x40135000
close(3)                                = 0
munmap(0x40014000, 31597)               = 0
--- SIGSEGV (Segmentation fault) ---
+++ killed by SIGSEGV +++

> Is 2.4.18 a useable kernel?

Ships with Debian 3.0, _should_ be OK (-:

> (I know virtually nothing about Linux kernels.)

Install Gentoo. (-:

Cheers; Leon