[vlc-devel] More on the weird VLC 0.5.3 segfault

[j.zorko at att.net]

Hello, all ...

I've more info on the weird VLC 0.5.3 segfault i'm experiencing on RH9 and OSX 10.2.6.  Since GDB 
is of no help (it appears as though the stack is getting trashed) i've run strace on RH9, and ktrace / 
kdump on OSX.  All this revealed was that the last kernel call (actually, the last n kernel calls) were 
to nanosleep() (RH9) and gettimeofday() (OSX).  Since the problem doesn't happen with --novideo 
(but does happen with --vout dummy), I started looking at src/video_output/video_output.c.  I'm 
not totally sure if this is the problem, but since the comments in this code talk about heaps being 
associated with pictures to be rendered and stuff, and since the problem doesn't seem to happen 
with --novideo, this seems like a candidate.

This is using the standard 0.5.3 codebase -- no changes.  We're wanting client VLC instances to be 
available in a pool i.e. we don't want to have to start a client VLC when someone requests a stream 
from our system, we want to use an idle one.  This issue happens if the client VLC was playing a 
stream (MPEG2 TS), the stream stopped (server VLC SIGINTd until it dies), then the server VLC is 
started a few minutes later.  It doesn't always happen, but after 3-4 times of doing this, the client 
VLC always segfaults, and GDB is thoroughly confused (can't get registers, no stack trace, can't get 
threads, it be _all_ freaked out).

I'm new to these areas of VLC, and am trying to get my head around the video decoding / 
rendering code to see if I can narrow the scope of the problem.  If anyone knows what the issue 
might be, or can illuminate me as to other things to look for / try, i'd appreciate it :-)

Regards,

John

--
Falling You - exploring the beauty 
of voice and sound
http://www.mp3.com/fallingyou








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