Re: Yet another crash in FreeBSD 5.1

From: Greg 'groggy' Lehey <grog_at_FreeBSD.org>
Date: Sun, 3 Aug 2003 10:47:25 +0930
On Saturday,  2 August 2003 at 17:56:49 -0700, Terry Lambert wrote:
> Greg 'groggy' Lehey wrote:
>>> You don't actually need a crash dump to debug a stack traceback.
>>
>> Great!  So you know the answer?  Please submit a patch.
>>
>> Seriously, this is nonsense.  Yes, it's a null pointer dereference.
>> What?
>
> That is precisely what doing what I suggested discovers, Greg.

Yes, that's what you said already.

> If you haven't seen his response posting:

I saw it and explained why it didn't help.

> Clearly, bp2 or bp is NULL at the time of the dereference.
>
>> Why?
>
> Programmer error.  Either bp2 or bp is a NULL pointer.

You're repeating yourself.

>> How do you fix it?
>
> It depends on the root cause.

*bingo*  Here you are having found the first (obvious) step and acting
as if the problem has been solved.

> I really can't answer it

OK, why don't you either:

1.  Find a way to answer it, or
2.  Keep quiet.

You're just confusing the issue here.

>> Finding the first step doesn't solve the problem.
>
> No.  Finding the first step is *necessary* to solving the problem,
> but you are entirely correct in pointing out that it's not in
> itself *sufficient*.
>
> But it's one step farther along than he was.  I didn't see anyone
> else helping him take that first step, so I did.

Sorry, I don't hack in the middle of the night.  If you had read the
documentation at your disposal, you'd have discovered a lot of help,
and also that this is a known problem that crops up sporadically, and
that so far we can't find out why.

Greg
--
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Received on Sat Aug 02 2003 - 16:17:29 UTC

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