Re: bootstrap & memory allocation troubles

[Giorgos Keramidas <keramida@ceid.upatras.gr>]

On 2006-01-14 20:40, Gaute B Strokkenes <gs234@srcf.ucam.org> wrote:
> On 14 jan 2006, monnier@iro.umontreal.ca wrote:
> > Hmm... so all the assertions related to the code that uses posix_memalign
> > succeeded.  That makes me more or more suspect it's a bug in FreeBSD's
> > posix_memalign.  My gut feeling is that calling `free' on a block returned
> > by `posix_memalign' messes up the malloc library's invariants.
>
> >From the node "Aligned Memory Blocks" in the libc manual:
>
>      With the GNU library, you can use `free' to free the blocks that
>   `memalign', `posix_memalign', and `valloc' return.  That does not work
>   in BSD, however--BSD does not provide any way to free such blocks.
>
> If this is information is accurate wrt. FreeBSD then that is probably
> your problem, yes....

That's not true.  The manpage of posix_memalign() states that:

#      Memory that is allocated via posix_memalign() can be used as an argument
#      in subsequent calls to realloc(3), reallocf(3), and free(3).

So if free() messes up malloc's internal data it's a bug in the
posix_memalign() implementation that needs to be fixed.