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From: campbell@maynard.BSW.COM (Larry Campbell)
Newsgroups: news.software.b
Subject: News patch #4 may break small systems
Message-ID: <869@maynard.BSW.COM>
Date: Sun, 8-Mar-87 09:12:06 EST
Article-I.D.: maynard.869
Posted: Sun Mar  8 09:12:06 1987
Date-Received: Mon, 9-Mar-87 19:40:36 EST
Reply-To: campbell@maynard.UUCP (Larry Campbell)
Organization: The Boston Software Works, Inc.
Lines: 29
Keywords: inews bug loop

After applying news patch #4, my system became severely constipated.
Processes running inews were going into infinite loops.  Examination
of several core dumps revealed that inews was doing:

    insert -> broadcast -> log -> sprintf -> _doprnt -> malloc -> <loop>

My system is a humble 16-bitter, and everything is pretty close to the
edge.  I looked at the patch and the only thing that looked like it might
affect storage was the change in header.h from:

	char nbuf[BUFLEN];

to

	char nbuf[LBUFLEN];

So I tried changing it back to BUFLEN, and the problem disappeared.

Now of course malloc shouldn't go into an infinite loop, but I don't
have a source license, so there's not much I can do about malloc.
I just thought I'd mention this in case other 16-bit systems running
V7-derived UNIX ran into it.

(My system is a DEC Rainbow running VENIX 2.0, which is essentially V7.)
-- 
Larry Campbell                                The Boston Software Works, Inc.
Internet: campbell@maynard.uucp             120 Fulton Street, Boston MA 02109
uucp: {alliant,wjh12}!maynard!campbell              +1 617 367 6846
ARPA: campbell%maynard.uucp@harvisr.harvard.edu      MCI: LCAMPBELL