Re: PHP 5.2.3 - Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Per Jessen wrote:

Stut wrote:

Anyway, I think it's exceptionally poor show by php to cause a segfault, probably due to user code. I know it does it every now and then, and nobody has ever been interested in looking at the core dump.

This will have nothing to do with user code since no user code is involved in displaying the version info. It's most likely a problem with mixed version numbers, or possibly (but unlikely) a configuration issue. If there's an auto_prepend_file or auto_append_file in the configuration that may be loaded by php -v, I'm not sure. Blaming PHP for this is like blaming Microsoft because Photoshop crashed on a Windows machine. It's possible PHP is to blame but there is a whole stack of other considerations to go through before coming to that conclusion.

Stut, put this problem aside for a sec, and let me ask this - if I can produce an apache core-dump using vanilla apache, vanilla php (even with no extensions if you want) and a PHP script, you'll get someone to debug it? (I cannot promise a easily reproducable problem, just the core-dump, and a few hundred lines of script) FYI, I've tried that before, and the PHP developers are not interested and/or they do not work with core dumps.

Please tell me you're kidding? If you can't provide a piece of code that always causes the segfault are you seriously expecting the devs to waste their time trying to find the cause? Talk about a needle in a haystack. The ease of reproduction is not particularly important, although the easier the better. The important thing is that every time you run the script it causes a segfault.

I still maintain it is exceptionally poor show by php to let user code produce segfaults in apache.

To me this comment indicates a lack of experience in software development with C. Segfaults are a fact of life and it's very difficult to cover every possible cause, especially when you are using a number of external libraries. Expecting PHP to be perfect is unrealistic. The core development team is a limited resource and they need to put their time where their time provides the most benefit. I'm not saying they always get this right, but you can't expect them to invest their time into fixing a problem you've found unless you've done the work yourself to isolate where the problem is and you have a piece of code that causes it 100% of the time. -Stut -- http://stut.net/