Re: libtool 1.5.10: AC_LIBTOOL_SYS_MAX_CMD_LEN causes system crash

[Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser]

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On Sunday 16 January 2005 13:28, Peter O'Gorman wrote:

> > Yes.  The idea that a modern system can be trigged to kernel-panic from
> > a shell script is truely frightening though.
>
> Thanks, I just committed it. It is quite frightening that libtool can cause
> a panic, isn't it. Hans (may I call you Hans?) has been in touch with HP
> about it.

Thanks for your efforts!  The problem occurs due to an unfortunate combination 
of (i) misleading documentation of a "feature" in the OS and (ii) a not 
entirely mature OS feature.

(i) is the disable_arg_limit switch.  It was put in place ONLY to allow 
installation of certain patch packages requiring enormously long command line 
args.  If you talk to the right people at HP, they clearly tell you only to 
disable the limit while installing packages that you cannot install 
otherwise.  Unfortunately, their man page writers got this wrong, so the man 
page recommends disabling as default ...

(ii) is the bigpage feature in the kernel that is not entirely stable yet.  I 
submitted my crash logs to HP and they seem very interested in fixing things.

Best
Hans 


- -- 
Dr. Hans Ekkehard Plesser
Associate Professor
Dept. of Mathematical Sciences and Technology
Norwegian University of Life Sciences
Phone +47 6494 8832
Fax   +47 6494 8810
Home  http://arken.umb.no/~imfhep

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