[Xastir] So, a question on all this building...

[Tom Russo]

On Sat, Feb 06, 2010 at 01:38:15PM +1100, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <vk3xci at aanet.com.au> flavor, containing:
> Interesting Tom,
> 
> I do use the server ports to connect other clients. UI-view from my office work 
> box and xastir from the eeepc 701 in the bedroom (sad isn't it?)
> 
> The question is how does the bug manifest? I don't recall ever having any 
> problems. Lucky maybe?

I just dug through my emails from the period, and am mistaken that the error
caused segfaults.  The error is that after closing the connection of a client
to an Xastir server port, Xastir was not accepting reconnects and was spewing
error messages.  You can find a description of it in the list archives from
September 2008, under the subject "Problem with Xastir Server Ports".  The 
bug in question was fixed first by commit 1.60 to x_spider.c on 
22 September 2008 and then definitively by commit 1.61 on 26 September 2008.  
The commit that introduced the bug was revision 1.59 on 11 June 2008.  The 
revision of x_spider.c that's in Xastir 1.9.4 is revision 1.59.

The point is that we had a release in August of 2008 that had a bug that 
was not detected for two months prior to release.  It was reported by a user
and promptly fixed approximately one month after the release, and users of CVS 
got it immediately.  Users of release tarballs didn't get the fix until 1.9.6 
was released in October 2009, and users of Ubuntu's package still have it.
 
As for why you never noticed... could be just lucky.  Do you by any chance run 
Xastir by double-clicking an icon instead of by running it in a terminal 
window?  The error message wouldn't show up if you were.  Do you ever have 
trouble reconnecting a client to Xastir if you disconnect it?

> Tom Russo wrote:
> ...Much snipped out.....
> 
> > And oddly, 1.9.4 had a serious bug related to server ports --- a pointer
> > was getting zeroed when it shouldn't have been, before a pipe was done
> > with it.  I'm surprised it isn't biting anyone.  Perhaps the folks that use
> > this binary don't use Xastir server ports for anything.
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > 
> > 
> > No virus found in this incoming message.
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> > 
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-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
  In some cultures what I do would be considered normal. 
                                  -- Ineffective daily affirmation