With Kernel 3.11RC6 Ubuntu servguide PDF compile crashes

[Doug Smythies]

I often run the current release candidate (RC) on a 12.04 server computer.
When compiling any non-english PDF version of the Ubuntu server guide, one of the programs crashes (and creates a log, which I will attach shortly, but summary below). While it has been a very long time since I tried to compile a non-english PDF serverguide, I did more work to narrow down the issue:

Kernel: Ubuntu 3.11 RC5 = No Problem (actually, all tested kernels <= 3.11 RC5)
Kernel: Kernel.org 3.11 RC5 = No Problem
Kernel: Ubuntu 3.11 RC6 = Problem
Kernel: Kernel.org 3.11 RC6 = Problem

Someone else has reported the same issue ( http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2168771 )

#
# A fatal error has been detected by the Java Runtime Environment:
#
# SIGSEGV (0xb) at pc=0x00002b6061972239, pid=2950, tid=47114532034304
#
# JRE version: 6.0_27-b27
# Java VM: OpenJDK 64-Bit Server VM (20.0-b12 mixed mode linux-amd64 compressed oops)
# Derivative: IcedTea6 1.12.6
# Distribution: Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, package 6b27-1.12.6-1ubuntu0.12.04.2
# Problematic frame:
# J java.lang.String.charAt(I)C
#
# An error report file with more information is saved as:
# /home/doug/sguide-1310/cg01/hs_err_pid2950.log
#
# If you would like to submit a bug report, please include
# instructions how to reproduce the bug and visit:
# https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/openjdk-6/
#
Aborted (core dumped)
make: *** [serverguide-pdf] Error 134

doug@s15:~/sguide-1310/cg01$ cat /proc/version_signature
cat: /proc/version_signature: No such file or directory
doug@s15:~/sguide-1310/cg01$

doug@s15:~/sguide-1310/cg01$ lsb_release -rd
Description: Ubuntu 12.04.3 LTS
Release: 12.04

[Doug Smythies (dsmythies)]

One of the crash log files.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 1215665

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[Doug Smythies (dsmythies)]

apport-collect has never worked for me. Right now, and after entering "apport-collect 1215665" I have some weird stuff on my puTTY session screen and I can not seem to find any way to either log in to launchpad from there or exit.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Doug Smythies, thank you for taking the time to report this bug and trying to help make Ubuntu better. However, the mainline kernel is not a software package provided by the official Ubuntu repositories. Quoting from https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/MainlineBuilds#Kernel.2BAC8-FAQ.2BAC8-DebuggingMainlineBuildsSupport.Does_the_kernel_team_support_the_mainline_kernel_builds.3F :
"The mainline kernels builds are produced for debugging purposes and therefore come with no support. Use them at your own risk."

Because of this the Ubuntu project can not support or fix your particular bug. Please report this bug to the provider of the software package. Thanks!

If you are interested in learning more about software repositories and Ubuntu, check https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Repositories

[Doug Smythies (dsmythies)]

I am well aware of what you wrote. I was simply trying to help.

[Doug Smythies (dsmythies)]

This issue occurs also with Kernels 3.10.8 and 3.10.9, but not 3.10.7.

I was not looking for support with this bug report, I was wanting to make developers aware that something has gone wrong in just the last few days.

In my opinion, I can not file a bug at bugzilla because: I do not know the specific area of the kernel to file it against; I only know how to reproduce the issue using Ubuntu specific stuff.

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Doug Smythies, if this is reproducible in the latest kernel that comes with your Ubuntu release, you are welcome to boot into this kernel, and execute at a terminal:
apport-collect 1215665

and we can take it from there.

[Doug Smythies (dsmythies)]

For goodness sakes: This is not a serverguide issue, it is a kernel issue. And "apport-collect" has never worked for me, as I mentioned in post #4. I give up.

[Doug Smythies (dsmythies)]

I am sure it is not a serverguide issue, so am changing it back.
I am hoping you will accept "incomplete" status, and I will come back when the upstream commit
( df54d6fa54275ce59660453e29d1228c2b45a826 ) gets backported to my standard kernel.
I see backporting is in progress for kernel series 3.5 and 3.8.

In addition to isolating the exact upstream commit for this issue, I have isolated it to a the single line change within
arch/x86/kernel/sys_x86_64.c sys_x86_64.c

[Doug Smythies (dsmythies)]

The issue raised in this bug report has been fixed in 3.11RC7.

The one code line the issue had been isolated to has been changed again (I have not found the reference commit number, or even tried yet):

doug@s15:~/temp-k-git-3.10rc4/linux/arch/x86/kernel$ diff -u sys_x86_64.c.original sys_x86_64.c
--- sys_x86_64.c.original 2013-08-23 23:55:39.947039089 -0700
+++ sys_x86_64.c 2013-08-25 23:46:04.401893263 -0700
@@ -101,7 +101,7 @@
                                *begin = new_begin;
                }
        } else {
- *begin = mmap_legacy_base();
+ *begin = current->mm->mmap_legacy_base;
                *end = TASK_SIZE;
        }
 }

If I understand correctly, the earlier commit has been backported to Ubuntu 3.8 and 3.5 series kernels and are in a gueue on their way towards review and eventual release. Hopefully this newer change will be added before those kernels are released.

[Doug Smythies (dsmythies)]

Just adding the upstream commit numbers and descriptions:

commit 41aacc1eea645c99edbe8fbcf78a97dc9b862adc
Author: Radu Caragea <email address hidden>
Date: Wed Aug 21 20:55:59 2013 +0300

    x86 get_unmapped_area: Access mmap_legacy_base through mm_struct member

    This is the updated version of df54d6fa5427 ("x86 get_unmapped_area():
    use proper mmap base for bottom-up direction") that only randomizes the
    mmap base address once.

    Signed-off-by: Radu Caragea <email address hidden>
    Reported-and-tested-by: Jeff Shorey <email address hidden>
    Cc: Andrew Morton <email address hidden>
    Cc: Michel Lespinasse <email address hidden>
    Cc: Oleg Nesterov <email address hidden>
    Cc: Rik van Riel <email address hidden>
    Cc: Ingo Molnar <email address hidden>
    Cc: Adrian Sendroiu <email address hidden>
    Cc: Greg KH <email address hidden>
    Cc: Kamal Mostafa <email address hidden>
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <email address hidden>

commit 5ea80f76a56605a190a7ea16846c82aa63dbd0aa
Author: Linus Torvalds <email address hidden>
Date: Thu Aug 22 09:13:06 2013 -0700

    Revert "x86 get_unmapped_area(): use proper mmap base for bottom-up direction"

    This reverts commit df54d6fa54275ce59660453e29d1228c2b45a826.

    The commit isn't necessarily wrong, but because it recalculates the
    random mmap_base every time, it seems to confuse user memory allocators
    that expect contiguous mmap allocations even when the mmap address isn't
    specified.

    In particular, the MATLAB Java runtime seems to be unhappy. See

      https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60774

    So we'll want to apply the random offset only once, and Radu has a patch
    for that. Revert this older commit in order to apply the other one.

    Reported-by: Jeff Shorey <email address hidden>
    Cc: Radu Caragea <email address hidden>
    Cc: Andrew Morton <email address hidden>
    Signed-off-by: Linus Torvalds <email address hidden>

[Kamal Mostafa (kamalmostafa)]

The replacement fix (41aacc1 "x86 get_unmapped_area: Access mmap_legacy_base through mm_struct member") will appear soon in Ubuntu kernels:
  Saucy - from v3.11-rc7 which includes 41aacc1
  Raring - after 41aacc1 lands in the next 3.8-stable version
  Quantal - after 41aacc1 lands in the next 3.5-stable version
  Precise - after 41aacc1 lands in the next 3.2-stable version

For the record, (df54d6f "x86 get_unmapped_area(): use proper mmap base for bottom-up direction") was NOT actually applied to 3.8 or 3.5 stable. For Ubuntu kernels, only Saucy's v3.11-rc6 pre-release kernel is affected by the bug.

[Tim Gardner (timg-tpi)]

dsmythies - doh! Sorry about changing the package. I'd been looking at too many bugs that day.

[Doug Smythies (dsmythies)]

This one can be set to "Fix released". Does anyone disagree?

[Julian Wiedmann (jwiedmann)]

So let's close it then.