[Pan-users] Re: Pan 0.132 segmentation fault

[Duncan]

Michael Henry <address@hidden>
posted address@hidden, excerpted below, on  Sat, 06 Dec 2008
17:13:20 +1000:

> OK, I've just downloaded and compiled the source for Pan 0.133.
> 
> Exactly the same behaviour.
> 
> I then moved the ~/.pan2 directory to another location so that I'd start
> with a "clean sheet" and this at least fixes the segmentation fault.
> 
> I've just checked a few newsgroups and it looks like the last week worth
> of messages is missing. Maybe there's an issue at the ISP, but this
> shouldn't be causing Pan to crash.

There was a buffer underflow aka security vulnerability in the way pan 
0.132 treated *.nzb files in some cases.  That fault was known to cause 
pan to segfault at start trying to load its own tasks.nzb, if it had 
crashed or otherwise somehow gotten the file into an inconsistent state 
in the previous session.

The problem was supposed to have been fixed with a security patch for pan 
0.132 (which SuSE may or may not have applied to its 0.132, I don't 
know).  That patch also made it into 0.133, so the problem shouldn't 
occur any longer.  Given the inconsistent tasks.nzb file, it should now 
throw an assertion, but I'm not sure whether it throws it and continues, 
picking up the pieces as best it can, or whether it throws it and then 
does a controlled exit instead of segfaulting.

In any case, you should be able to move the old data back (with pan 
closed, of course) and then just delete the tasks.nzb (or, if you're up 
to it and want to try to save as many of the tasks as possible, you can 
try to edit it by hand to eliminate the inconsistency).  After that, you 
should be able to start pan just fine, and the problem shouldn't occur 
again with 0.133.

If you have further segfaults with 0.133, you're hitting something else, 
because as I said, that patch made it into it, for sure.  But given you 
hit it running 0.132, that was likely your problem and you'll be OK, as 
soon as that tasks.nzb is out of the way.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman