Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!auspex!guy
From: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.bugs
Subject: Re: Sun4os4 /bin/sh dumps core. (was: perl 3.0 dumps core)
Message-ID: <2439@auspex.auspex.com>
Date: 12 Sep 89 16:19:24 GMT
References: <550@caldwr.UUCP> <SCHWARTZ.89Sep7220013@shire.cs.psu.edu> <FLEE.89Sep7225002@shire.cs.psu.edu> <2256@hydra.Helsinki.FI> <876@pogo.omni.com>
Reply-To: guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris)
Organization: Auspex Systems, Santa Clara
Lines: 21

>This is probably a silly question, but could it have anything to do with
>struct alignment rules wrt SPARC as opposed to 680x0?

One last time:

	1) The bug that causes "/bin/sh" to drop core is not the same as
	   the bug that causes Perl 3.0, as distributed, to drop core on
	   a SPARC-based machine when you run "make test".

	2) Neither bug is due to dynamic linking; the Perl bug is due to
	   a problem with "vfork", and is fixed by compiling "util.c"
	   with "vfork" #defined as "fork".  (The "/bin/sh" bug is quite
	   unlikely to be due to "vfork" problems, since "/bin/sh" in
	   SunOS doesn't *do* any "vfork"s....)

There may be some alignment bugs in Perl; Theodore Ts'o's posting
indicates that there seemed to be such bugs when he brought it up on a
DECStation, and such bugs would be likely to show up on SPARC-based
machines as well.  The bug that started this thread ain't one of them,
though.  The cause of said bug has been identified, so please, no more
speculation on its cause....