Segmentation fault during package install using PowerPC Alternate CD

[TJ]

Binary package hint: debian-installer

Trying to install on an Apple iMac G3 powermac2,2 "Summer 2000 special edition" with a 500Mz PowerPC 750 and 384MB of RAM.

This PC has OS X 10.4.1 Tiger installed and working already with 11GB space left free on the 20GB hard drive to install Ubuntu in a dual-boot configuration.

The machine previously had Ubuntu Jaunty installed from LiveCD and was subsequently dist-upgraded to Karmic, which failed part way through.

As a result OS X was reinstalled from scratch and now I'm attempting to use the PowerPC port Alternate CD.

During the base-system phase, and the "select and install software" phase, something causes a segmentation fault during some packages extraction/configuration steps. dmesg doesn't contain any helpful information on the precise culprit, and tty1 ncurses dialogs get obliterated by stack traces that are unreadable because each line isn't vertically aligned.

syslog indicates only "segmentation fault" and once I noticed "Illegal instruction".

I had a brief discussion on IRC with cjwatson on how best to diagnose this. The basics are detailed at:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Installer/FAQ#How%20do%20I%20debug%20the%20installer?

To avoid the ncurses installer display being messed up by the stack traces and to try and get them in a readable format that may be captureable:

cjwatson: the kernel is just writing that to the foreground console, I think. your best hope is probably to boot with DEBIAN_FRONTEND=text and hope it reproduces with that frontend

[TJ (tj)]

I've been able to manually reproduce the crash for a specimen package. Note that I had to copy-type this backtrace because I was unable to capture it using stdin/stderr redirection to a file.

$ chroot /target

# /usr/bin/dpkg-reconfigure docbook-xml
*** glibc detected *** /usr/bin/perl: double free or corruption (out) 0x107e3940
======= Backtrace: =======
/lib/libc.so.6(+0x82fe4)[0xfc2dfe4]
/lib/libc.so.6(cfree+0x8c)[0xfc3367c]
/usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10(Perl_safesysfree+0x2c)[0xfef9f4c]
/usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10(Perl_sv_eq+0xd0)[0xff32cd0]
/usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10(Perl_pp_seq+0xd4)[0xff44364]
/usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10(Perl_runops_standard+0x40)[0xff12880]
/usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10(perl_run+0x360)[0xfeb4b70]
/usr/bin/perl(main+0x110)[0x10000af0]
/lib/libc.so.6(+0x1f73c)[0xfbca73c]
/lib/libc.so.6(+0x1f900)[0xfbca900]
======= Memory map: =======
Aborted
Segmentation fault
*** glibc detected *** /usr/bin/perl: double free or corruption (out) 0x101a5878
======= Backtrace: =======
/lib/libc.so.6(+0x82fe4)[0xfc2dfe4]
/lib/libc.so.6(cfree+0x8c)[0xfc3367c]
/usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10(Perl_safesysfree+0x2c)[0xfef9f4c]
/usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10(Perl_sv_eq+0xd0)[0xff32cd0]
/usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10(Perl_pp_seq+0xd4)[0xff44364]
/usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10(Perl_runops_standard+0x40)[0xff12880]
/usr/lib/libperl.so.5.10(perl_run+0x360)[0xfeb4b70]
/usr/bin/perl(main+0x110)[0x10000af0]
/lib/libc.so.6(+0x1f73c)[0xfbca73c]
/lib/libc.so.6(+0x1f900)[0xfbca900]
======= Memory map: =======
Aborted
#

[TJ (tj)]

Just to be absolutely sure I replaced both Kingston RAM modules in case this is being caused by corruption. Unfortunately the same issue occurs at the same point so I'm beginning to wonder if one or more packages has been compiled with flags that are inconsistent with the 750.

I'm going to try to find and install a Jaunty or Karmic to verify that the problem is specifically with this Lucid Alternate.

[TJ (tj)]

Installing the Karmic 9.10 alternate PowerPC release from the CD, there were no problems or errors reported.

I'm coming to the conclusion that one or more of the packages in Lucid (possibly specific to the debian-installer) is built with flags that prevent it working on the G3 power 750.