Bug#377857: occasional SIGSEGV in exim4 under heavy load

[Chris Lightfoot]

On Tue, Jul 18, 2006 at 03:18:06PM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 18, 2006 at 02:12:38PM +0100, Chris Lightfoot wrote:
> > I've just had a try on another machine (different
> > hardware, 2.6 kernel rather than 2.4) and it hasn't
> > crashed in a few minutes' testing. Is it possible you've
> > been testing on 2.6? I've also tried it on a third
> > machine, identically configured to the second, but running
> > 2.4, and the bug does exhibit there.
> 
> Yes, I am testing on a 2.6 kernel. I have not been running a 2.4
> kernel in ages, and Debian etch will still support 2.4 kernel, but
> only optionally.

not really interested in etch, as we're running stable.

> So, if this is a kernel 2.4 issue, I'd like to close this bug or
> reassign to the 2.4 kernel packages (if there are any left).

More likely a libc bug than a kernel bug, though it could
still be an exim bug. Exim's signal handling is a bit
wierd, but looks correct to me. glibc has quite different
threads code for running under 2.6 than 2.4.

> Are you
> running a Debian kernel, or did you roll your own?

built my own.

    [...]
> > It turns out (as expected, more-or-less) that you don't
> > need to do any deliveries to trigger it; simply connecting
> > and disconnecting is enough. The program below triggers
> > the bug on the first machine rather more quickly than
> > postal typically does.
> 
> Does it trigger the bug on the 2.6 kernel as well?

no.

-- 
Chris Lightfoot
mySociety