uthread_kern.c problems (still)

From: Mac Newbold <mac_at_macnewbold.com>
Date: Fri, 5 Mar 2004 07:47:34 -0700 (MST)
I've been getting bitten a lot lately by a bug in uthread_kern.c that
keeps causing my apache processes to run away, until I kill them. (dmesg
indicates it has also been happening to fstat processes too, but they die
instead of running away.)

The apache error log indicates this:

[Tue Mar 02 09:54:35 2004] [notice] child pid 52132 exit signal Abort trap (6)
Fatal error 'Unable to read from thread kernel pipe' at line 1100 in file
/usr/src/lib/libc_r/uthread/uthread_kern.c (errno = 0)

dmesg gets stuff like this:

pid 40525 (fstat), uid 0: exited on signal 11
pid 40377 (httpd), uid 80: exited on signal 6
pid 39306 (httpd), uid 80: exited on signal 6
pid 40770 (httpd), uid 80: exited on signal 6
pid 41064 (fstat), uid 0: exited on signal 11

I'm running apache2, mysql, php, and openssl:

Apache/2.0.48 (Unix) mod_perl/1.99_12 Perl/v5.6.1 PHP/4.3.4 mod_ssl/2.0.48
OpenSSL/0.9.7a Server

The crashes come most often running php scripts, and certain scripts can
be very reliable in causing the problem.

> uname -a
FreeBSD <host-name> 5.2-CURRENT FreeBSD 5.2-CURRENT #3: Thu Feb 26 17:50:22
MST 2004     root_at_tahiti.dmedia.ws:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

It started after I had been using 5.1-p10 for several months, so I
upgraded to the lastest current (post 5.2-RELEASE) a few days ago, and the
problem was still there.

Google reveals that people have been seeing crashes from it for at least 8
months now, going back to June 2003, most often with gnucash for some
reason, but with apache as well. Related messages:

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-hackers/2003-November/004121.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2004-January/017764.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-gnome/2004-January/004505.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2003-June/002248.html
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-ports/2003-July/002839.html

Any ideas for solutions or workarounds would be greatly appreciated.

If others are having this problem, and you'd like something to keep your
runaway processes under control, I've got a script for it now.

Thanks,
Mac

--
Mac Newbold
mac_at_macnewbold.com
MNE - Mac Newbold Enterprises, LLC
<a href="http://www.macnewbold.com/">MNE</a>
<a href="http://www.dmedia.ws/">Dmedia</a>
<a href="http://www.bluelune.com/">Bluelune Web Guide</a>
Received on Fri Mar 05 2004 - 05:47:36 UTC

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