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Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!purdue!bu-cs!bzs
From: bzs@bu-cs.BU.EDU (Barry Shein)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions,comp.unix.wizards,gnu.gcc.bug
Subject: Re: gnucc and signal 6
Message-ID: <30748@bu-cs.BU.EDU>
Date: 6 May 89 15:02:25 GMT
References: <433@brian386.UUCP>
Organization: Boston U. Comp. Sci.
Lines: 28


From: news@brian386.UUCP (Wm. Brian McCane)
>SIGIOT	06	IOT instruction
>
>(Thanks guys ;-)  Anyway, what is an IOT instruction and why would I be
>getting one during a compile.
>
>My system is MicroPort V386r3.0e.

Aha! That's your problem, an IOT is an instruction on a PDP-11, you
have the wrong machine!

What's probably happened is the compiler has called abort(3) after
detecting an internal error to try to force a core dump of itself,
abort() uses SIGIOT (sends itself a kill(0,SIGIOT) on the assumption
that it won't be used for anything else so will take the default
action and core dump.)

IOT really is a PDP-11 instruction (I/O Trap) so the name is just a
hangover tho the concept probably could have been valid (eg.
asynchronous I/O completion or I/O error) but alas they couldn't keep
their grubby little hands off it :-)
-- 

	-Barry Shein, Software Tool & Die

There's nothing more terrifying to hardware vendors than
satisfied customers.