From: Daniel Berger <djberg96@...>
Date: 2008-09-13T01:48:16+09:00
Subject: Strange Errno::EOVERFLOW error with IO#read and IO#sysread

Hi all,

Ruby 1.8.6 p114 (32-bit)
Solaris 10

I'm reading binary data out of the /proc/<pid>/as file on Solaris, and
I'm hitting a curious overflow error on one process in particular:

# With IO#sysread
irb(main):010:0> File.open("/proc/383/as"){ |fh| fh.sysread(4) }
Errno::EOVERFLOW: Value too large for defined data type - /proc/383/as
        from (irb):10:in `sysread'
        from (irb):10
        from (irb):10:in `open'
        from (irb):10

# With IO#read
rb(main):010:0> File.open("/proc/383/as"){ |fh| fh.read(4) }
Errno::EOVERFLOW: Value too large for defined data type - /proc/383/as
        from (irb):10:in `read'
        from (irb):10
        from (irb):10:in `open'
        from (irb):10

Where pid 383 is:

UID   PID  PPID   C    STIME TTY         TIME CMD
root   383     1   0 07:14:42 ?           0:01 /usr/sfw/sbin/snmpd

This is the only pid in particular where this error occurs (out of
about 80).

Any idea what's happening here?

Thanks,

Dan