All SD (Software Distributor) commands coredump

[Tim Robin]

On my HP-UX 11.11 (N Class server), all SD commands (swlist, swinstall) are coredumping.

Here is the error message:

#swlist
Memory fault(coredump)

#file core
core: core file from 'swlist' - received SIGSEGV

Stack trace (using gdb) shows the following:

Core was generated by `swlist'.
Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault.
(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
(no debugging symbols found)...(no debugging symbols found)...
(no debugging symbols found)...#0 0xc02320f8 in getpwuid_r+0xc0 ()
from /usr/lib/libc.2

[Florian Heigl (new acc)]

You don't happen to have lowered Your ulimit settings? :)

Otherwise I'd check the binaries and possibly consider manually reinstalling some of them (tar should do).

Also I'm confused no debug symbols are found, my sw*-binaries are not stripped, but maybe this is more related to my limited debugging knowledge :)

[Duncan Edmonstone]

ALl these commands need to talk to swagentd. Have you tried restarting it:

swagentd -r


HTH

Duncan

[Dietmar Konermann]

Hmm,

looks like the SIGSEGV is received while running getpwuid_r(3C).

How do you lookup passwd entries? Standard /etc/passwd, NIS, LDAP? Something changed in this area?

If you are using /etc/passwd... have a close look at it. Weird control characters? Last line not terminiated with \n?

Best regards...
Dietmar.

[Ermin Borovac · Accepted solution]

Can you please post the following:

o libc patch level
o passwd line from /etc/nsswitch.conf

Also check if LD_PRELOAD shell environment variable is set, and if it is try unsetting it.

[Tim Robin]

Thanks Ermin, unsetting LD_PRELOAD shell variable solved the problem. It was set to Java shared library,
/opt/oracle/product/8.1.7_32/JRE/lib/PA_RISC/native_threads/libjava.sl.

Any idea, when to set this ENV variable?

[Ermin Borovac]

LD_PRELOAD environment variable enables you to load additional shared libraries when you run a program. LD_PRELOADed libraries are loaded before any other shared libraries program was explicitly linked with.

Typically this is used to solve a specific problem with application that cannot be relinked to include these additional libraries, but as you found out it can cause problems if defined globally (i.e. exported).

If you have an application that requires use of LD_PRELOAD (you should know why it was defined), then it's best to run it as

$ LD_PRELOAD=

This way LD_PRELOAD is not exported to environment and it applies to this invocation of only.