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"Suresh" <> wrote in message news:...

> My C++ program crashes with "signal BUS (invalid address alignment)" at
> random places. Does anyone know what this could mean ? What is the cause of
> signal BUS ?

I suspect, it's "invalid address alignment" just as it says. Typically, you are violating
the alignment constranits, etc...

char foo[10];
*(int*)(foo+1) = 1;

for example on a machine that requires int's to be aligned on some multiple number
of bytes.

The historical word SIGBUS comes from the UNIX signal names which was derived
from the PDP-11 BUS ERROR processor trap. There were two things that would cause
this trap. One was accessing words on odd addresses. The other was accessing a
memory address that, while mapped in to your address space, didn't answer (missing or
otherwise not responding).

Ron Natalie wrote:
> "Suresh" <> wrote in message news:...
>
>
>>My C++ program crashes with "signal BUS (invalid address alignment)" at
>>random places. Does anyone know what this could mean ? What is the cause of
>>signal BUS ?
>
>
> I suspect, it's "invalid address alignment" just as it says. Typically, you are violating
> the alignment constranits, etc...
>
> char foo[10];
> *(int*)(foo+1) = 1;
>
> for example on a machine that requires int's to be aligned on some multiple number
> of bytes.
>
> The historical word SIGBUS comes from the UNIX signal names which was derived
> from the PDP-11 BUS ERROR processor trap. There were two things that would cause
> this trap. One was accessing words on odd addresses. The other was accessing a
> memory address that, while mapped in to your address space, didn't answer (missing or
> otherwise not responding).
>

While you may have diagnosed the problem, the OP mentioned "random"
crashes; a pure misalignment situation as you've illustrated would
happen directly at the site. [NFI]

HTH,
--ag


--
Artie Gold -- Austin, Texas

"Artie Gold" <> wrote in message news:...

>
> While you may have diagnosed the problem, the OP mentioned "random"
> crashes; a pure misalignment situation as you've illustrated would
> happen directly at the site. [NFI]

Well it's not clear what he means by random. Most likely if it means it doesn't
always happen, that it's a uninitialized variable causing a misaligned pointer
access. It can also because his program just sometimes happens to do it's
accesses aligned and sometimes not alligned without any true "randomness"
but just fails or not fails in different situations.

Ron Natalie wrote:
> "Artie Gold" <> wrote in message news:...
>
>
>>While you may have diagnosed the problem, the OP mentioned "random"
>>crashes; a pure misalignment situation as you've illustrated would
>>happen directly at the site. [NFI]
>
>
> Well it's not clear what he means by random. Most likely if it means it doesn't
> always happen, that it's a uninitialized variable causing a misaligned pointer
> access. It can also because his program just sometimes happens to do its
> accesses aligned and sometimes not alligned without any true "randomness"
> but just fails or not fails in different situations.
>

Valid point!

....and unless it _is_ flaky hardware (could be, I guess) it's obviously
not random in any real sense. It can sure _look_ that way though!

--ag

BTW -- [NFI] == no flame intended


--
Artie Gold -- Austin, Texas