Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!sunic!tut!santra!hemuli.atk.vtt.fi!tml
From: tml@hemuli.atk.vtt.fi (Tor Lillqvist)
Newsgroups: comp.sources.bugs
Subject: Re: Sun4os4 /bin/sh dumps core.
Message-ID: <4095@hemuli.atk.vtt.fi>
Date: 17 Sep 89 09:42:46 GMT
References: <2439@auspex.auspex.com> <68400003@sts> <2441@auspex.auspex.com>
Reply-To: tml@hemuli.atk.vtt.fi (Tor Lillqvist)
Organization: Technical Research Centre of Finland
Lines: 13

Various people write about the perl test suite failing with a
memory fault and dumped core on Sun 4 machines, a few even
thinking that it is /bin/sh that dumps core.

The problem with perl 3.0 on SPARC machines probably lies in
malloc.c, where the overhead union needs more strict alignment.
Adding a double field in the union takes care of that.  At least
this was the case on the HP9000 Series 800 (HP-PA, aka Spectrum),
which also is a strict-alignment RISC machine.
-- 
Tor Lillqvist
Technical Research Centre of Finland, Computing Services (VTT/ATK)
tml@hemuli.atk.vtt.fi [130.188.52.2]