Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!csd4.milw.wisc.edu!lll-winken!uunet!tektronix!percival!bucket!servio!penneyj
From: penneyj@servio.UUCP (D. Jason Penney)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.rt
Subject: Re: 4.3 on the RT, request for problems, bugs, etc
Keywords: 4.3bsd, PC-RT, bugs
Message-ID: <107@servio.UUCP>
Date: 15 Apr 89 00:12:11 GMT
References: <19072@joyce.istc.sri.com>
Reply-To: penneyj@servio.UUCP (D. Jason Penney)
Organization: Servio Logic Development Corp.; Beaverton, OR
Lines: 74

OK, here are the bugs we've found using AIX 2.1 in-house.  The
bug numbers are from our own internal reporting system, and I'll
provide a brief description of each.  Some of the bugs are not
BSD specific, but may be of interest to this newsgroup anyway:

bug2956: dbx does not handle .hc files -- We have files with executable
c functions that are included by other c files.  SunOs handles this
all right, but it is VERY difficult to debug this code under AIX.

bug2957: c compiler problems with void * --  The following program
generates a compiler error under AIX:

     main()
     { void * junkPtr;

     junkPtr = 0;
     }

You get the error,
"bar.c", line 5: junkPtr undefined

Cute, huh?  This works OK on our other compilers, including SunOs.

bug2958: cc has problem with -o option -- The manual says that "-o"
specifies the name of the resulting object file.  Experimentation shows that
1) cc does not allow an extension (i.e. ".o") to be specified in the file
name.
2) Even if you omit the extension, cc places the .o file in the current
directory, and with the same name as the c file.

We've had this experience with the Sequent machine, so this problem may
be pervasive to BSD and not unique to AIX.

bug2961: uname() and unamex() problem -- This is minor and AIX specific.
The calls are supposed to return -1 on success, but they actually seem
to return some nonnegative value.

bug2962: AIX include problems:  
1) <unistd.h> is included by multiple files in /usr/include, and even worse, 
it has a typedef so the multiple inclusion causes compilation errors.
2) <sys/select.h> has a typedef of struct timeval instead of itself
including <time.h> which has the same struct defined.  This of course
gives you grief if you attempt to include both h files.

bug2966: getpwname() failure in AIX:  This is a bug from the BSD point
of view, but probably a feature from the point of view of security.
getpwnam() will NOT returned the encrypted password of a user unless you
are running as root.  BSD definitely allows anyone to see the encrypted
password, and thus anyone can verify whether a password is correct.

bug2972: Can't Debug Using AIX Tools:  Several moderately sized
executables in-house cause both dbx and sdb to go into an infinite loop
when you attempt to "run" the program.  A bit of spying suggests that
the program prolog code is getting overwritten with trash.

bug2983: sdb Can't Handle FuncTypes:  Since our code runs on several
pANS compilers, we declare our function pointers as typedefs so the
compiler can check number and types of arguments.  Example:

typedef void aFuncType(/* prototype omitted in AIX */);

main() {
aFuncType * junkPtr;
(*junkPtr)();
}

When you sdb this you get the weird message,

Proc Aux entry missing for aFuncType

bug3111: setpgrp() Incorrectly Documented:  The manuals describe a
System V version of setpgrp() when in fact the runtime library only
behaves properly if you use the BSD version of the definition.  This
is actually a help if you're porting from a BSD system.