[Rd] Fix for foreign package segfault on Solaris 10 Intel

[Jeff Long]

I built it several times with a variety of flags and compilers. 
Here's what was used for the gcc3 build:

/opt/csw/gcc3/bin/gcc -std=gnu99 -G -L/opt/sfw/lib -L/opt/csw/lib 
-L/opt/local/lib -L/usr/apps/cdat32/NetCDF/lib -o foreign.so avl.o 
dbfopen.o file-handle.o format.o init.o minitab.o pfm-read.o 
Rdbfread.o Rdbfwrite.o R_systat.o SASxport.o sfm-read.o spss.o 
stataread.o   -L/admin/users/jwlong/R/src/R-2.8.1/lib -lR

On my system, the main R shared library shows a dependency on libavl, 
and hence so does foreign.so and the R binary:

  % ldd R
         libR.so =>       /opt/local/lib/R/lib/libR.so
         libRblas.so =>   /opt/local/lib/R/lib/libRblas.so
         libc.so.1 =>     /lib/libc.so.1
         libg2c.so.0 =>   /opt/csw/lib/libg2c.so.0
         libm.so.2 =>     /lib/libm.so.2
         libintl.so.8 =>  /opt/csw/lib/libintl.so.8
         libreadline.so.4 =>      /opt/csw/lib/libreadline.so.4
         libncurses.so.5 =>       /opt/csw/lib/libncurses.so.5
         libnsl.so.1 =>   /lib/libnsl.so.1
         libsocket.so.1 =>        /lib/libsocket.so.1
         libdl.so.1 =>    /lib/libdl.so.1
         libiconv.so.2 =>         /opt/csw/lib/libiconv.so.2
         libm.so.1 =>     /lib/libm.so.1
         libgcc_s.so.1 =>         /opt/csw/lib/libgcc_s.so.1
         libsec.so.1 =>   /lib/libsec.so.1
         libmp.so.2 =>    /lib/libmp.so.2
         libmd.so.1 =>    /lib/libmd.so.1
         libscf.so.1 =>   /lib/libscf.so.1
         libavl.so.1 =>   /lib/libavl.so.1
         libdoor.so.1 =>  /lib/libdoor.so.1
         libuutil.so.1 =>         /lib/libuutil.so.1
         libgen.so.1 =>   /lib/libgen.so.1


Looking through these various shared libs, it looks like 
/lib/libsec.so.1 is the one that pulls in libavl. And libintl is what 
pulls in libsec. And R itself pulls in libintl.

Jeff


==========================================
At 11:20 PM +0000 3/6/09, Prof Brian Ripley wrote:
>Can you show us the output you get from building foreign, and 
>explain how it comes to be linked against libavl?  I get (SunStudio 
>12)
>
>cc -xc99 -G -L/opt/csw/lib -o foreign.so R_systat.o Rdbfread.o 
>Rdbfwrite.o SASxport.o avl.o dbfopen.o file-handle.o format.o init.o 
>minitab.o pfm-read.o sfm-read.o spss.o stataread.o
>
>and ldd library/foreign/libs/foreign.so reveals no dependencies (and 
>the R binary is not linked against libavl either).
>
>I can see that linking against libavl could cause problems, but have 
>no idea why that might be happening.
>
>
>On Fri, 6 Mar 2009, Jeff Long wrote:
>
>>Like a couple of other posters in the past year, I was seeing R 
>>2.8.1 segfault in the foreign package on my Solaris 10 Intel system:
>>
>>      > library(foreign)
>>
>>      *** caught segfault ***
>>      address fe1d5c70, cause 'invalid permissions'
>>
>>      Traceback:
>>           1: .C("spss_init", PACKAGE = "foreign")
>>           2: fun(...)
>>
>>This happened whether I built with gcc3, gcc4, or SunStudio 12.
>>
>>Using pstack I found that the code was crashing in avl_create(). 
>>Using truss I found that identically named functions in the Solaris 
>>/lib/libavl.so.1 library were being used instead of the AVL 
>>functions provided in avl.c in the foreign package. To verify, I 
>>replaced all of the "avl_" and "AVL_" patterns in 
>>foreign/src/*.[ch] with "ravl_" and "RAVL_" respectively. Once I 
>>made this change, loading the foreign package caused no further 
>>problems.
>>
>>An alternative workaround was a hack involving symlinks and 
>>LD_LIBRARY_PATH, but that was not satisfactory. Since the foreign 
>>avl functions are incompatible with the ones provided by the 
>>standard Sun library, this approach has other potential gotchas.
>>
>>FYI.
>>
>>Jeff
>>
>>______________________________________________
>>R-devel at r-project.org mailing list
>>https:// stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-devel
>>
>
>--
>Brian D. Ripley,                  ripley at stats.ox.ac.uk
>Professor of Applied Statistics,  http:// www. stats.ox.ac.uk/~ripley/
>University of Oxford,             Tel:  +44 1865 272861 (self)
>1 South Parks Road,                     +44 1865 272866 (PA)
>Oxford OX1 3TG, UK                Fax:  +44 1865 272595