abort() and exit(1) make RHEL freeze when core size limit is higher than 2 MB

[Xavier Wielemans <willy@alterface.com>]

[ I hope this is a relevant linux-kernel bug - I think so, all apologies if 
not... ]
[ Please CC me personally if replying, I'm not subscribed to the list - 
thank you ! ]

Hi all,

I encountered the following problem - when my C++ application executes the 
abort() or exit(1) system instructions, if the core size limit was 
previously set to more than ~2MB (ulimit -c 2000), my PC freezes totally 
and must be power-cycled...

If the core limit is left untouched to 0 (default), the abort or exit 
instructions are executed without problems, but of course no core file is 
dumped !

If core limit is set to 2000 or less, a core file is dumped but it is 
unreadable (certainly because it is trimmed to less than its actual size).

If core limit is set to 4000 or higher (including 'ulimit -c unlimited') 
the machine freezes as soon as abort() or exit() are executed.

Here are my configuration details :

[wielemans@electro:wielemans] cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux WS release 3 (Taroon Update 1)

[wielemans@electro:wielemans] uname -a
Linux electro 2.4.21-9.0.1.EL #2 Fri Apr 16 13:51:32 CEST 2004 i686 i686 
i386 GNU/Linux

[wielemans@electro:wielemans] gcc -v
Reading specs from /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i386-redhat-linux/3.2.3/specs
Configured with: ../configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man 
--infodir=/usr/share/info --enable-shared --enable-threads=posix 
--disable-checking --with-system-zlib --enable-__cxa_atexit 
--host=i386-redhat-linux
Thread model: posix
gcc version 3.2.3 20030502 (Red Hat Linux 3.2.3-24)

If you need more details, please ask !  Any help or idea welcome, thanks in 
advance...

Have a nice day !

Willy.

Xavier Wielemans

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