Buffer overuns with the Electric fence debugging library

From: "Maurice Gittens" <mgittens(at)gits(dot)nl>
To: "PostgreSQL-development" <hackers(at)postgresql(dot)org>
Subject: Buffer overuns with the Electric fence debugging library
Date: 1998-03-18 11:33:49
Message-ID: 00ad01bd5261$b8d64f40$fcf3b2c2@caleb..gits.nl
Views: Raw Message | Whole Thread | Download mbox | Resend email
Thread:
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.

Responses

Browse pgsql-hackers by date

  From Date Subject
Next Message Michael Meskes 1998-03-18 12:56:58 another standards question
Previous Message Pedro J. Lobo 1998-03-18 11:29:24 Re: Unix Domain Sockets error (was Re: [HACKERS] Alpha initdb fixed!)