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From: tgt@neon.ecn.purdue.edu (Conan the Librarian)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd
Subject: apparent csh bug, 386bsd
Keywords: free(), core.csh
Message-ID: <1992Aug15.201227.11858@noose.ecn.purdue.edu>
Date: 15 Aug 92 20:12:27 GMT
Sender: news@noose.ecn.purdue.edu (USENET news)
Organization: Purdue University Engineering Computer Network
Lines: 61
I'm getting the following strange behavior when running csh as joe user
("tgt"). I have not seen any of this while running a Bourne shell:
Login as tgt, and simply start moving around within subdirectories with "cd".
Eventually I get an error message of the type
free(20008) above top of memory.memtop = 2a000 membot = 23504
or
free(24de8) bad block.memtop = 29800 membot = 23504
On rare occasions I get a csh core dump and the system logs me out (with or
without the above error message).
Now here is where it gets really strange. Alias "cd" to incorporate the
current working directory ($cwd) into the prompt. Then cd around again,
in a directory structure like follows:
LEVEL 0 1 2 ...
/usr
/tgt
/bin
/dud
/src
/stu
/stupid
/stupid
Everytime I cd into a level 1 directory WITH 3 LETTERS IN THE NAME, (either
from a directory above or below it) I get either A) an error message from
free() of the two types above or B) two bogus characters, one a superscript-2
and the other a smiley face appended to the end of the directory printed out
in the prompt. If this latter happens, then I am hosed. vi fails with core
dumps, "rm", "mv", or "cd" cause csh itself to core dump, logging me off.
This is very reproducible, as crazy as it may sound!
An example (short) login session:
/usr/tgt > cd bin/dud
/usr/tgt/bin/dud > cd
/usr/tgt > cd stupid
/usr/tgt/stupid > cd ..
/usr/tgt > cd bin
/usr/tgt/bin^2^0 > cd .. LOGOUT!!!
1) I have not (perhaps YET) noticed this when operating as root.
2) It is not a function of the particular file system (I've had this behavior
when /usr is a mounted SCSI file system and when part of the root IDE file
system).
3) Recompiling csh hasn't helped.
Any ideas???
-tom
--
Tom Tobin UUCP: pur-ee!tgt
Dept. of ChE INTERNET: tgt@ecn.purdue.edu
Purdue University Ma Bell: home (317) 463-0189
W. Lafayette, IN 47907 office " 494-4052