Re: [HACKERS] Buffer overuns with the Electric fence debugging library

Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>

From: Bruce Momjian <maillist@candle.pha.pa.us>
To: mgittens@gits.nl (Maurice Gittens)
Cc: hackers@postgreSQL.org
Date: 1998-03-18T15:46:48Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
> 
> Hi everybody,
> 
> The electricfence library is a tool which helps us to detect
> buffer overruns in C programs.
> 
> Linking Postgresql with this library gives at least 3 errors I have found
> until now.
> 
> The errors manifest themselves in sql statements like:
> 1. create table test(f1 int);
> This one allways fails.
> 2. select * from pg_shadow
> Only some tables give errors so the problem seems to be related
> to the type/alignment of fields in the tables.
> 
> The errors are all found in the DataFill function called from
> heap_from_tuple.
> 
> I'm using a snapshot version of postgresql downloaded around
> the release date 6.3.
> 
> This all is on Linux (Redhat 4.0) with Electric Fence version 2.0.5.
> 
> Do you guys feel comfortable with a database which has reproducible
> buffer overuns?
> 
> I think it would be great is somebody who has more experience with
> postgresql than I were to look at this.
> 
> I am now going to do some work which I actually get paid to do!
> 
> With regards from Maurice.
> 
> 
> 
> 

Can you send us the lines that cause the problem?  I will look at them. 
I have electric fence here on BSDI, but it really takes some time to
run.

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