Re: Assertions

[Roland McGrath]

> I seem to be getting this an awful lot on my new Hurd box (Marcus' recent
> tarball):
> 
> ext2fs.static: ../../ext2fs/dir.c:495: dirscanblock: Assertion 
> `dp->dn->dirents[idx] == -1 || dp->dn->dirents[idx] == nentries' failed.
> 
> I am running inside a VmWare setup, so there may be complications imposed by
> that.  I've never seen this on any of my other computers.

I have been having the same problem and other related ones (various other
assertions in dir.c).  I understand this code well, and have added some
more hacks in my tree to print out more info and so forth.  But I haven't
made any real progress in figuring it out.

I too am using vmware and have no other machine to try.  This has gotten so
bad, in fact, that I have given up trying to get my vmware hurd
installation back into shape for now, since it got frotzed and I run into
these ext2fs problems before apt can install enough of a system to be
useful (though I got much further than this before, in the same vmware setup).

I am currently suspecting either some memory clobberation in ext2fs,
or vmware bugs that cause the virtual machine's memory to be clobbered.