From: michel <michel.revesche@...>
Date: 2008-06-11T15:29:03+09:00
Subject: Re: Core dumps in ruby-tk on Mandriva 2008.1

> On Mon, 09 Jun 2008 01:34:09 -0500, michel wrote:
> > I had excatly the same problem with a 32 bits mandriva 2008.1
> > running on a single core sempron with 1 Go RAM, but because I did
> > not have any need to upgrade, I came back to mandriva 2007.1.
> >
> >> This may not be the appropriate forum for this problem but I have
> >> exhausted other avenues of enquiry, including Bugzilla.  The fault
> >> applies to a particular release of Mandriva Linux; on 2007.0 it
> >> did not occur and neither in 2008.0.  Mandriva 2008 Spring
> >> (2008.1) however does exhibit the bug or whatever it is.  Somebody
> >> using Cooker, essentially 2009.0, does not see the fault.
> >>
> >> Ruby fails almost immediately for any ruby-tk script with a
> >> message which always has this form:
> >>
> >>   alloc: invalid block: 0x95e190: ef ef 30 Abort (core dumped)
> >>
> >> The address varies to some extent but the contents or whatever
> >> they are (registers maybe) always come up as ef ef 30.  My guess
> >> is that there is a failure to initialize some variable or pointer
> >> which is used in memory allocation.  As far as I can see the root
> >> window is created successfully and it may be possible to run one
> >> or two lines of code beyond that.  Then it breaks.  Ruby itself
> >> works without a problem, likewise fxruby, and Tcl/Tk scripts on
> >> their own work and so do combinations of Tcl/Tk and C or C++. 
> >> There are no architecture or version mismatches.  The test system
> >> is x86_64 dual core with Tk 8.5a5. Other people have already
> >> pointed out that Mandriva should have moved on to 8.5b3 by now but
> >> that may be irrelevant because Tk does work.  I have reinstalled
> >> 2008.1 two or three times and also reverted to 2008.0 to prove
> >> that 2008.1 always behaves this way and only 2008.1.
> >>
> >> Has anybody else here seen this?  It would be helpful to me if
> >> someone with an installation of Mandriva Spring 2008 on a 64-bit
> >> machine could check this out, maybe using an example from the
> >> Pickaxe or Using Ruby Gems.  I could supply a simple test script
> >> if necessary.
> >>
> >> TIA
> >>
> >> Len
>
> If you do need to go back to 2008.1 try installing ruby1.8.7,
> currently only available as a tarball.  There should be no problems
> with that but you should check the ruby build environment before you
> do to figure out which options to pass to configure.  Drop me a line
> if you need help with that.  The other good news is that the tkimg
> package should continue to work if you have it installed.  The
> documentation fot ruby and ttk indicates that you need to register
> read and write image format handlers for each type of image but the
> libjpeg etc. code seems to be picked up OK.
>
> Len

Thanks a lot for your investigation.
Michel.