Re: setup test #5 - RC1

[Charles Wilson <cwilson at ece dot gatech dot edu>]

I got the BSOD/reboot on a *different* W2K machine -- one that has not 
exhibited other instability.  That shoots down my "it was an unstable 
machine anyway" excuse -- the problem may actually be in setup.exe.

Here's what I was able to discover:

The error log says:
The computer has rebooted from a bugcheck.  The bugcheck was: 0x0000000a 
(0x00000014, 0x00000002, 0x00000000, 0x80454c5d). Microsoft Windows 2000 
[v15.2195]. A dump was saved in: E:\WINNT\Minidump\Mini110201-01.dmp.

0x0000000a is an access violation type of error -- bad pointers, invalid 
accesses, etc -- but I'd imagine this sort of thing can only cause a BSOD 
if it occurs in kernel mode.  Perhaps during a system call, but setup 
passes bad parameters?

I have the minidump, but not a full memory dump -- and since I don't have 
the kernel symbols, a w2k kernel debugger, etc, I don't think the minidump 
will be of much use.

doing a postmortem on my system, I find that the error occurred at a 
particular point:

I was upgrading the following packages using setup-20011002-5.exe:

cygrunsrv-0.94-1.tar.bz2 --> cygrunsrv-0.94-2.tar.bz2
gdb-20010428-1.tar.gz --> gdb-20010428-3.tar.bz2
newlib-man-20001118.tar.gz --> newlib-man-20001118-1.tar.bz2
vim-6.0.11-1.tar.bz2 --> vim-6.0.46-1.tar.bz2

Here is the sequence of events (during the same setup.exe run)

1. cygrunsrv uninstalled
2. cygrunsrv installed
3. gdb uninstalled
4. gdb installed
5. newlib-man uninstalled
6. newlib-man installed
7. vim uninstalled
8. vim partially installed
   (This was interrupted by the bluescreen)
All but the last few files in the archive were installed ok.  The last file 
installed was usr/share/vim/vim60/tutor/tutor (and it was installed 
completely, not partially).

The missing files (e.g. setup didn't get a chance to install these at all) 
were:
usr/share/vim/vim60/tutor/tutor.es
usr/share/vim/vim60/tutor/tutor.fr
usr/share/vim/vim60/tutor/tutor.info
usr/share/vim/vim60/tutor/tutor.it
usr/share/vim/vim60/tutor/tutor.ja.euc
usr/share/vim/vim60/tutor/tutor.ja.sjis
usr/share/vim/vim60/tutor/tutor.vim
usr/share/vim/vim60/vimrc_example.vim

Of course, since the BSOD occured prior to setup finishing, my 
/etc/installed.db was not updated to reflect the installation of ANY of 
these four packages.

So, the error occured *after* completely installing a file (..tutor/tutor) 
but before beginning to write the next file to disk (..tutor/tutor.es).

This smells like a pointer error in the decompression/untar functions. 
I've seen this BSOD happen before (on the "unstable" machine, so I didn't 
blame setup) but only on BIG tarballs, now that I think about it.  The 
strange thing is,  it was rarely repeatable -- I'd just "try again" and it 
would work.  (Another reason I didn't blame setup.exe).

Perhaps a pointer var being stored in a short int? I dunno, I'm just 
brainstorming.  Data: vim-6.0.46.tar (after bunzip2'ing) is 9,226,240 bytes 
long.  No integer variable type overflows around 9M, does it?  Perhaps the 
error depends on where in memory the data buffer for the 
in-memory-uncompressed .tar image is based....

I've got personal stuff this evening, but I'll try to hunt this one down 
this weekend if nobody beats me to it.

--Chuck


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