OpenBSD Journal

s2k15: the stack overflow that wasn't

Contributed by tbert on from the too-big-to-succeed dept.

From the trenches of s2k15:

There was a recent bug in OpenBSD install kernels. At random times during the install, messages like the following would appear:

/upgrade: //install.sub[168]: sleep: Cannot allocate memory
/upgrade: //install.sub[168]: cat: Cannot allocate memory
This is pretty unusual. sleep and cat are not usually memory intensive. Clearly, something had changed. There were a few initial suspects but they had been pretty well tested. What was different?

Read the whole thing to find out the answer!

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Comments
  1. By Anonymous Coward (98.247.121.92) on

    It may sound trivial, but posts like this I find really interesting. Especially the process used to trouble shoot the problem and find the root cause. The link to the eventual solution was also helpful and informative. Thanks!

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