Comment 0 for bug 2071445

Revision history for this message
Alberto (aescolar) wrote :

## Issue details

The configuration of the kernel in linux-image-6.8.0-1008-azure is incompatible with the way libc6:i386 is built.
This leads to the error "The futex facility returned an unexpected error code." and application crash when trying to execute many 32bit applications in x86-64 machines.

In very short the issue is the following:
This kernel image is compiled with CONFIG_COMPAT_32BIT_TIME=n, unlike the vanilla Ubuntu 24.04 kernel images.
But, the glibc / libc6:i386 distributed with Ubuntu24.04 is compiled needing the syscalls enabled with that option.
i.e. **This kernel configuration is just incompatible with the provided glibc**

In detail:
glibc when built for 32bit, if not told which kernel is built for, will decide if the time_t value fits or not in a 32bit time_t, and do either the 32 or 64bit syscall:
https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=nptl/futex-internal.c;h=0bb1dd51f66802521afd71b9246222ed0ea0d862;hb=refs/heads/release/2.39/master#l90
calls with no deadline fit in the 32bit version, but as the kernel does not provide this syscall, glibc will just get a ENOSYS, and glibc will error out aborting the program
```
abort (abort.c:79)
__libc_message_impl.cold (libc_fatal.c:132)
__libc_fatal (libc_fatal.c:141)
futex_fatal_error (futex-internal.h:87)
__futex_abstimed_wait_common (futex-internal.c:119)
```
after printing "The futex facility returned an unexpected error code.\n":
https://sourceware.org/git/?p=glibc.git;a=blob;f=sysdeps/nptl/futex-internal.h;h=0e87e92d15ab92f5069463719a494e97d9800431;hb=refs/heads/release/2.39/master#l87

## Expected behavior:

* No crashes for 32bit applications with this kernel
* This kernel image built with CONFIG_COMPAT_32BIT_TIME=y

## Aditional info:

For reference, this is the current vanilla Ubuntu 24.04 kernel for x86_64 and this config:
```
$ uname -a
Linux <redacted> 6.8.0-35-generic #35-Ubuntu SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Mon May 20 15:51:52 UTC 2024 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ grep CONFIG_COMPAT_32BIT_TIME /boot/config-$(uname -r)
CONFIG_COMPAT_32BIT_TIME=y
```

On the other hand this is the kernel config for this kernel image:
```
Linux <> 6.8.0-1008-azure #8-Ubuntu SMP Fri May 17 10:44:55 UTC 2024 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
# CONFIG_COMPAT_32BIT_TIME is not set
```

Related github issue (the issue was found in github ubuntu 24.04 runners)
https://github.com/actions/runner-images/issues/9977