[TUHS] 211bsd: kernel panic after a 'here document' in tcsh

Johnny Billquist bqt at update.uu.se
Wed Jun 7 05:15:23 AEST 2017


On 2017-06-06 04:00, Michael Kjörling <michael at kjorling.se> wrote:
>
> On 5 Jun 2017 16:12 +0200, from w.f.j.mueller at retro11.de (Walter F.J. Mueller):
>> I'm using 211bsd (Version 447) and found that a 'here document' in tcsh
>> leads to a kernel panic. It's absolutely reproducible on my system, both
>> when run it on my FPGA PDP-11 or in simh. Just doing
>>
>>   tcsh
>>   cat << EOF
> I'm curious whether the same thing happens if you try that in some
> other shell? (Not sure how widely here documents were supported back
> then, but I'm asking anyway.)

Not sure if any of the other shells have this. We're basically talking 
csh, sh and ksh unless I remember wrong.
But it's a good question. If noone else have tried it by tomorrow, I 
could check.

>> is enough, and I get
>>
>>     ka6 31333 aps 147472
>>     pc 161324 ps 30004
>>     ov 4
>>     cpuerr 20
>>     trap type 0
>>     panic: trap
>>     syncing disks... done
>>
>> looking at the crash dump gives
>>
>>   cd /etc/crash
>>   ./why 4
>>     Backtrace:
>>     0147372: _boot(05000,0100) from    ~panic+072
>>     0147414: _etext(011350) from ~trap+0350
>>     0147450: ~trap() from call+040
>>     0147516: _psignal(0101520,0160750) from ~trap+0364
>>     0147554: ~trap() from call+040
>>
>> so the crash is in psignal, which is afaik the kernel internal
>> mechanism to dispatch signals.
> The PC value in the panic report ("pc 161324") strikes me as high, but
> 161324 octal is 58068 decimal, so it's not excessively so, and perhaps
> in line with what one might expect to see with a kernel pinned near
> top of memory. Are the offsets in the backtrace constant, i.e. does it
> always crash on the same code?

161324 is way high. This is in kernel mode, and that is in the I/O page. 
Basically no code lives in the I/O page (some boot roms and hardware 
diagnostics excepted). This smells like corrupted memory (pointer or 
stack), or something else very funny.

> Not knowing what cpuerr 20 is specifically doesn't help, and at least
> http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/29bsd/usr/src/sys/sys/trap.c.html#n:112
> (which doesn't seem to be too far from what you are running) isn't
> terribly enlightening; CPUERR is simply a pointer into a memory-mapped
> register of some kind, as seen at
> http://www.retro11.de/ouxr/29bsd/usr/include/sys/iopage.h.html#m:CPUERR,
> and at least pdp11_cpumod.c from the simh source code at
> http://simh.trailing-edge.com/interim/pdp11_cpumod.c wasn't terribly
> enlightening, though of course I could be looking in entirely the
> wrong place.

Like others said - the cpu error register is documented in the processor 
handbook.

020 means Unibus Timeout, which is consistent with trying to access 
something in the I/O page, where there is no device configured to 
respond to that address.

I just tried the same thing on a simh system here, and I do not get a 
crash. This on 2.11BSD at patch level 449, running on an emulated 11/94.

I do however get tcsh to crash.

simh:/home/bqt> su -
Password:
erase, kill ^U, intr ^C
# tcsh
simh:/# cat << EOF
Illegal instruction - core dumped
#
Suspended (tty input)
simh:/home/bqt>
simh:/home/bqt> cat /VERSION
Current Patch Level: 448
Date: January 5, 2010


Yes, it says patch level 448, but it really is 449. This was the system 
where I worked together with Steven when doing the 449 patch set, but I 
never got around to actually updating the VERSION file itself.

Also, this was while running on the console.



Could you (Walter) try the latest version of 2.11BSD and see if you 
still get that crash?

	Johnny

-- 
Johnny Billquist                  || "I'm on a bus
                                   ||  on a psychedelic trip
email: bqt at softjar.se             ||  Reading murder books
pdp is alive!                     ||  tryin' to stay hip" - B. Idol



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