Martin, assertions are not the most suitable way to check for malloc failures. Assertions are to *assert* facts that must hold, i.e., the would be a logical error if they do not hold. Consequently, assertions are only enabled during development and testing, but disabled (for among others for performance reasons) in any production builds. If triggered, assertions stop the entire process instantly. Failing mallocs is a runtime exception that can occur at any time for various reasons. The code should check for this and gracefully handle such situations with proper exeption handling. Having said that, in particular is the man namespace is local per query/client, a failure in one query/client should not crash the whole server by an assertion (during development/testing) or a segfault (in production builds), but rather only greacefull trigger and handle an exception for that one query/client. Also, if namespaces are global and a malloc failure prevent the whole server from continuing properly, it should at least (try to) gracefully shut itself down (with a proper error message), rather than crashing instantly with an assertion of segfault. Best, Stefan On Wed, Dec 19, 2012 at 11:53:37AM +0100, Martin Kersten wrote:

Changeset: 2a9bd075c039 for MonetDB URL: http://dev.monetdb.org/hg/MonetDB?cmd=changeset;node=2a9bd075c039 Modified Files: monetdb5/mal/mal_namespace.c Branch: Feb2013 Log Message:

Properly realloc the namespace The expandName always lead to a different anchoring point of the namespace. This may leave concurrent threads with dead meat. This patch reduces the chance on a SEGfault.

diffs (37 lines):

diff --git a/monetdb5/mal/mal_namespace.c b/monetdb5/mal/mal_namespace.c --- a/monetdb5/mal/mal_namespace.c +++ b/monetdb5/mal/mal_namespace.c @@ -66,26 +66,13 @@ typedef struct NAMESPACE{ static Namespace namespace;

static void expandNamespace(void){ - str *nme; - size_t *length; - int *link, newsize, incr = 2048; - - newsize= namespace.size + incr; - nme= (str *) GDKmalloc(sizeof(str *) * newsize); - assert(nme != NULL); /* we cannot continue */ - link= (int *) GDKmalloc(sizeof(int) * newsize); - assert(link != NULL); /* we cannot continue */ - length = (size_t *) GDKmalloc(sizeof(size_t) * newsize); - assert(length != NULL); /* we cannot continue */ - - memcpy(nme, namespace.nme, sizeof(str *) * namespace.nmetop); - memcpy(link, namespace.link, sizeof(int) * namespace.nmetop); - memcpy(length, namespace.length, sizeof(size_t) * namespace.nmetop); - - namespace.size += incr; - GDKfree(namespace.nme); namespace.nme= nme; - GDKfree(namespace.link); namespace.link= link; - GDKfree(namespace.length); namespace.length= length; + namespace.size += 2048; + namespace.nme= (str *) GDKrealloc(namespace.nme, sizeof(str *) * namespace.size); + assert(namespace.nme != NULL); /* we cannot continue */ + namespace.link= (int *) GDKrealloc(namespace.link, sizeof(int) * namespace.size); + assert(namespace.link != NULL); /* we cannot continue */ + namespace.length = (size_t *) GDKrealloc(namespace.length, sizeof(size_t) * namespace.size); + assert(namespace.length != NULL); /* we cannot continue */ }

void initNamespace(void) { _______________________________________________ checkin-list mailing list checkin-list@monetdb.org http://mail.monetdb.org/mailman/listinfo/checkin-list

-- | Stefan.Manegold @ CWI.nl | DB Architectures (INS1) | | http://CWI.nl/~manegold/ | Science Park 123 (L321) | | Tel.: +31 (0)20 592-4212 | 1098 XG Amsterdam (NL) | _______________________________________________ developers-list mailing list developers-list@monetdb.org http://mail.monetdb.org/mailman/listinfo/developers-list