Re: Segfault while checking for suffix of executables

[Eric Blake]

On 08/29/2017 11:17 AM, Strates, Jimmy wrote:
> 
> I seem to have an issue with my computer; this almost positively isn’t a bug 
> in autoconf, but I can’t find the source.
> 
> I am using a Mac and installing packages through MacPorts; the other day, 
> every package that used an autoconf configure script started segfaulting 
> while “checking for suffix of executables…”. I’ve completely uninstalled 
> everything in MacPorts and MacPorts, reinstalled MacPorts, and the problem 
> persists.
> 
> I downloaded the autoconf 2.69 tarball (MacPorts is using autoconf 2.69) and 
> ran the test suite with the MacPorts autoconf. The results were concerning…

Let's look at some of those failures:

> ## ---------------------- ##
> ## Detailed failed tests. ##
> ## ---------------------- ##
> 
> #                             -*- compilation -*-
> 1. tools.at:46: testing Syntax of the shell scripts ...
> ./tools.at:48: test "$ac_cv_sh_n_works" = yes || exit 77
> ./tools.at:53: /bin/sh -n "$abs_top_builddir/bin/autoconf"
> stderr:
> ./tools.at:54: /bin/sh -n "$abs_top_builddir/tests/autoconf"
> stderr:
> /bin/sh: can't open input file: /tmp/autoconf-2.69/tests/autoconf
> ./tools.at:54: exit code was 127, expected 0
> 1. tools.at:46: 1. Syntax of the shell scripts (tools.at:46): FAILED 
> (tools.at:54)

This says your system was unable to run a shell script that should have
just been created.

> 
> #                             -*- compilation -*-
> 24. tools.at:879: testing autoupdating AU_ALIAS ...
> ./tools.at:892: autoupdate 
> ./tools.at:893: autoconf --force 
> ./tools.at:893: /bin/sh -n configure
> stderr:
> ./tools.at:893: exit code was 139, expected 0
> 24. tools.at:879: 24. autoupdating AU_ALIAS (tools.at:879): FAILED 
> (tools.at:893)

Even more worrisome, this says /bin/sh dumped core when trying to
analyze whether a 'configure' script had any syntax errors.  Are you
sure you haven't corrupted /bin/sh?  If you can't trust /bin/sh to not
dump core, there's not much autoconf can do; conversely, if we can
isolate exactly what bug we are tickling in /bin/sh, it may be possible
to tweak autoconf to avoid generating shell scripts that tickle that
pattern.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3266
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature