Emacs crashes, smtpmail-send-it and gdb

Emacs crashes, smtpmail-send-it and gdb

[Tim Cross]

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Hi All,

hoping someone can point me to a concise HOWTO on using gdb to debug emacs
crashes. I've not needed to work at this level since the mid 90s and apart
from having forgotten more than I remember, things have progressed somewhat.
Like everyone else, I'm pressed for time and just want to try and narrow
down the scope of my current issue enough to do a decent bug report.

The Problem: Since upgrading to the latest BZR sources for emacs 24 on
Monday, I've experienced multiple hard crashes when sending email. This has
occured with boht VM and Mew. All I get is emacs suddenly crashing and a
note on the console that says

Fatal Error (6)Aborted

This is the GTK+ version running under Linux (32 bit). The crashes occur
when I send the mail message. Both mail clients use smtpmail-send-it to
connect to a local smarthost for mail dispatching. The problem does not
happen every time you send mail, but it is quite frequent. I've not yet been
able to narrow down more precise information about what triggers the
problem.

Objective: Use GDB to try and get some clue as to where the problem is and
hopefully allow me to identify a recipe that will reproduce the problem so
that I can log a meaingful bug report that will allow someone more knowledge
than me to reproduce the problem and fix it.

What I'm hoping for is a web link or something that will let me get things
setup fast. I'm assuming it may be necessary to rebuild emacs with
appropriate debugging support, make some system changes to allow core file
generation and run a couple of basic gdb commands that may create a
meaningful trace or identify the section of code where the problem occurs.
While it may seem otherwise, I don't think I'm completely useless here -
Just out of touch (last time I did this, core files were the sort of thing
that just got created when a program crashed and a common cause of
filesystems running out of space@).

All suggestions/pointers appreciated.

thanks,

Tim

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Re: Emacs crashes, smtpmail-send-it and gdb

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2011 15:58:02 +1000
> From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> 
> hoping someone can point me to a concise HOWTO on using gdb to debug emacs
> crashes.

You mean, besides etc/DEBUG?  If that's not enough, please ask
specific questions.

Re: Emacs crashes, smtpmail-send-it and gdb

[Tim Cross]

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On Wed, Jun 1, 2011 at 4:56 PM, Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> wrote:

> > Date: Wed, 1 Jun 2011 15:58:02 +1000
> > From: Tim Cross <theophilusx@gmail.com>
> >
> > hoping someone can point me to a concise HOWTO on using gdb to debug
> emacs
> > crashes.
>
> You mean, besides etc/DEBUG?  If that's not enough, please ask
> specific questions.
>

Ah thanks. I'd looked in the emacs and elisp manuals and found nothing
specific. I didn't even think of looking in etc. Will check it out and see
if it is sufficient.

thanks,

Tim

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