Nagios SIGSEGV on FreeBSD 8

[Scott Lambert]

Bcc:ing port to close the thread there.

On Wed, Sep 23, 2009 at 12:58:01AM +0200, Stefan Bethke wrote:
> Am 22.09.2009 um 23:29 schrieb Scott Lambert:
> >I've posted this to FreeBSD-ports and Nagios-Users without a nibble.
> >
> >I've been running a FreeBSD 8-BETA2 server for DNS on a network I
> >recently took over.  No problems.  We needed to get Nagios running on
> >that network to watch all the hosts in RFC 1918 space.  Taking the
> >easy route, I just installed the Nagios 3.0.6 port on this 8-BETA2
> >box.
> >
> >Nagios runs great until an acknowledged down host (with
> >acknowledgment comment) comes back up.  Nagios exits on a SIGSEGV.
> >It seems to only happen when we have retention data (retention.dat)
> >showing the host down.  If we just restart Nagios without removing
> >the retention.dat file, it exists on SIGSEGV the next time it tries
> >to mark the host up.  I upgraded to the nagios-devel (Nagios 3.1.2)
> >port and we have the same problem.
>
> I'v discovered this bug in Nagios some weeks ago, but posting to
> nagios-devel did not elicit a response.  The problem is a use-after-
> free bug in the code that deals with comments (or it was in my case
> anyway).
>
> The bug leads to a SEGV because -current (including all 8.0 betas) has
> malloc flags set that make free write a canary value to the just-freed
> block.  If you move up to rc1, or set the "j" flag, nagios appears to
> work.
>
> If you need references to the threads on freebsd-ports and nagios-
> devel, let me know.

"sudo ln -s 'j' /etc/malloc.conf" seems to have done the trick.  Nice,
easy, fix (or bandaid?).

I don't know how I failed to find your thread before.

I found your thread on nagios-devel:

http://archive.netbsd.se/?ml=nagios-devel&a=2009-07&t=11196612

Thank you for taking the time to figure this out in the first place and
to reply to my message.

-- 
Scott Lambert                    KC5MLE                       Unix SysAdmin
lambert at lambertfam.org