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Date:      Thu, 10 Oct 1996 12:27:05 +0930 (CST)
From:      Michael Smith <msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
To:        dyson@FreeBSD.org
Cc:        msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au, current@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: 'dead' binary stays 'dead'?
Message-ID:  <199610100257.MAA16615@genesis.atrad.adelaide.edu.au>
In-Reply-To: <199610100238.VAA09727@dyson.iquest.net> from "John S. Dyson" at Oct 9, 96 09:38:53 pm

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John S. Dyson stands accused of saying:
>
> You are describing a problem that I know *can* happen, but I don't know
> why.  In essence, once you have a copy of a programs .text, .data in
> memory, it will continue to be cached until the memory is reclaimed.
> If any part of that image gets modified, then it will stay modified.

... but if these pages are the text and data, they're read-only, correct?
ie. the only modification possible is via hardware error?

> If you remove the file that has it's in-memory image broken, that
> brokenness will go away.  However, if you try to copy the
> file like:  cp ls ls.new, it is likely that ls.new will also be broken
> because the same image that is executed is also in the buffer cache
> (the cache and the image are pretty much one in the same.)  The
> best way to make the problem go-away is to fill memory and cause the
> broken binary to disappear.  Now, the complicated part is why it happened.

The relevant part of the 'going away' incident looked like this :

$ ls
<drat, another core>
$ cp -r /usr/src/bin/ls .
$ cd ls
$ CFLAGS=-g; make
$ gdb ls ../ls.core
<traceback looks like total garbage>
$ ./ls
<works>
$ ls
<works>

So I guess it's possible that the memory was reclaimed while I was rebuilding
a new 'ls'.

> Are you using NFS?  Are you using the most recent -current (snap)?...
> You know the typical questions :-).

Sorry 8)  NFS client only (but not on any of the filesystems being used),
supped at about the same time as the latest SNAP.

> John

-- 
]] Mike Smith, Software Engineer        msmith@atrad.adelaide.edu.au    [[
]] Genesis Software                     genesis@atrad.adelaide.edu.au   [[
]] High-speed data acquisition and      (GSM mobile) 0411-222-496       [[
]] realtime instrument control          (ph/fax)  +61-8-267-3039        [[
]] Collector of old Unix hardware.      "Where are your PEZ?" The Tick  [[



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