gnucash crashed with SIGSEGV in malloc_consolidate()

[Colin Law]

On up to date Quantal, crashed while attempting to save xml file.

ProblemType: Crash
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 12.10
Package: gnucash 1:2.4.10-5
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.5.0-10.10-generic 3.5.1
Uname: Linux 3.5.0-10-generic i686
ApportVersion: 2.4-0ubuntu6
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Aug 15 10:35:35 2012
ExecutablePath: /usr/bin/gnucash
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 12.10 "Quantal Quetzal" - Alpha i386 (20120730.1)
ProcCmdline: gnucash
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_GB:en
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SegvAnalysis:
 Segfault happened at: 0xb6cd7ea0: mov 0x4(%edi),%edx
 PC (0xb6cd7ea0) ok
 source "0x4(%edi)" (0xc159f8a4) not located in a known VMA region (needed readable region)!
 destination "%edx" ok
SegvReason: reading unknown VMA
Signal: 11
SourcePackage: gnucash
StacktraceTop:
 ?? () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
 ?? () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
 malloc () from /lib/i386-linux-gnu/libc.so.6
 xmlBufferCreate () from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libxml2.so.2
 xmlAllocOutputBufferInternal () from /usr/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libxml2.so.2
Title: gnucash crashed with SIGSEGV in malloc()
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
UserGroups: adm cdrom dip lpadmin plugdev sambashare sudo

[Apport retracing service (apport)]

StacktraceTop:
 malloc_consolidate (av=0xb6e05440) at malloc.c:4240
 malloc_consolidate (av=0xb6e05440) at malloc.c:4192
 _int_malloc (av=0xb6e05440, bytes=4096) at malloc.c:3532
 __GI___libc_malloc (bytes=4096) at malloc.c:2924
 xmlBufferCreate__internal_alias () at ../../tree.c:6892

[Sasa Paporovic (melchiaros)]

Hi Colin,

please provide an example file which for sure causes the crash.

Please give a step by step description like pushing this button, choosing that, waiting for, and so on). Give a good algorithmic description, that is complete and can guide a beginner in gnucash to the point where the problem happends.

(step1,
 step2,
.
.
.
finished)

Both is essential.

After that set the status of this report back to new.

Thanks

[Colin Law (colin-law)]

It has only happened once and I have no clues about what specific chain of events caused it. I was just saving the file, as I have done numerous times since, without the crash recurring.

[Sasa Paporovic (melchiaros)]

This is not the recommend procedure, but I have brought this upstream. As far as I could see it is a memory allocation problem(malloc).

[Sasa Paporovic (melchiaros)]

On GNOME-Bugtracker :

Geert Janssens [GnuCash developer] 2012-09-12 17:50:39 UTC

Thank you for your report.

The crash happens somewhere in libxml2, which is a library not part of the
GnuCash sources.

Additionally, the reporter can't reproduce this, making it almost impossible to
debug.

So there's not much the GnuCash developers can do here and I'll close this as
NOTGNOME.

If you can add more information (especially a reliable way to reproduce and
preferable some indications this is actually something in GnuCash code going
wrong), please feel free to reopen the report.