Question

I have an odd bug in my program, it appears to me that malloc() is causing a SIGSEGV, which as far as my understanding goes does not make any sense. I am using a library called simclist for dynamic lists.

Here is a struct that is referenced later:

typedef struct {
    int msgid;
    int status;
    void* udata;
    list_t queue;
} msg_t;

And here is the code:

msg_t* msg = (msg_t*) malloc( sizeof( msg_t ) );

msg->msgid = msgid;
msg->status = MSG_STAT_NEW;
msg->udata = udata;
list_init( &msg->queue );

list_init is where the program fails, here is the code for list_init:

/* list initialization */
int list_init(list_t *restrict l) {
    if (l == NULL) return -1;

    srandom((unsigned long)time(NULL));

    l->numels = 0;

    /* head/tail sentinels and mid pointer */
    l->head_sentinel = (struct list_entry_s *)malloc(sizeof(struct list_entry_s));
    l->tail_sentinel = (struct list_entry_s *)malloc(sizeof(struct list_entry_s));
    l->head_sentinel->next = l->tail_sentinel;
    l->tail_sentinel->prev = l->head_sentinel;
    l->head_sentinel->prev = l->tail_sentinel->next = l->mid = NULL;
    l->head_sentinel->data = l->tail_sentinel->data = NULL;

    /* iteration attributes */
    l->iter_active = 0;
    l->iter_pos = 0;
    l->iter_curentry = NULL;

    /* free-list attributes */
    l->spareels = (struct list_entry_s **)malloc(SIMCLIST_MAX_SPARE_ELEMS * sizeof(struct list_entry_s *));
    l->spareelsnum = 0;

#ifdef SIMCLIST_WITH_THREADS
    l->threadcount = 0;
#endif

    list_attributes_setdefaults(l);

    assert(list_repOk(l));
    assert(list_attrOk(l));

    return 0;
}

the line l->spareels = (struct list_entry_s **)malloc(SIMCLIST_MAX_SPARE_ELEMS * is where the SIGSEGV is caused according to the stack trace. I am using gdb/nemiver for debugging but am at a loss. The first time this function is called it works fine but it always fails the second time. How can malloc() cause a SIGSEGV?

This is the stack trace:

#0  ?? () at :0
#1  malloc () at :0
#2  list_init (l=0x104f290) at src/simclist.c:205
#3  msg_new (msg_switch=0x1050dc0, msgid=8, udata=0x0) at src/msg_switch.c:218
#4  exread (sockfd=8, conn_info=0x104e0e0) at src/zimr-proxy/main.c:504
#5  zfd_select (tv_sec=0) at src/zfildes.c:124
#6  main (argc=3, argv=0x7fffcabe44f8) at src/zimr-proxy/main.c:210

Any help or insight is very appreciated!

Answer 1

malloc can segfault for example when the heap is corrupted. Check that you are not writing anything beyond the bounds of any previous allocation.