Occasional seg fault in make check at dispatch.cc

[John W. Eaton]

On  4-Feb-2009, Michael D. Godfrey wrote:

| The following has been happening since a week or two ago:
| about 1 time in 3 when I run make check (with or without strace):
| 
| [vzero:octave] strace -o trace.out make check
| make -f octMakefile check
| make[1]: Entering directory `/d/src/octave/hg/octave'
| make -C test check
| make[2]: Entering directory `/d/src/octave/hg/octave/test'
| ../run-octave --norc --silent --no-history ./fntests.m .
| 
| Integrated test scripts:
| 
|   src/DLD-FUNCTIONS/besselj.cc ........................... PASS  180/180
|   src/DLD-FUNCTIONS/betainc.cc ........................... PASS    6/6  
|   src/DLD-FUNCTIONS/bsxfun.cc ............................ PASS   55/55 
|   src/DLD-FUNCTIONS/cellfun.cc ........................... PASS   74/74 
|   src/DLD-FUNCTIONS/chol.cc .............................. PASS   23/23 
|   src/DLD-FUNCTIONS/conv2.cc ............................. PASS    2/2  
|   src/DLD-FUNCTIONS/dassl.cc ............................. PASS    4/4  
|   src/DLD-FUNCTIONS/det.cc ............................... PASS    5/5  
|   src/DLD-FUNCTIONS/dispatch.cc ..........................make[2]: *** 
| [check] Segmentation fault
| make[2]: Leaving directory `/d/src/octave/hg/octave/test'
| make[1]: *** [check] Error 2
| make[1]: Leaving directory `/d/src/octave/hg/octave'
| make: *** [check] Error 2
| 
| ===================================================================
| The strace output is attached.  At first I thought that this problem was
| caused by not running rehash after compile, but this is not the cause.
| Even less often the src/DLD-FUNCTIONS/dispatch.cc test reports 1 FAIL.
| Rerunning make check almost always succeeds.  And, so far, octave has
| not failed while running after install.
| Trying: gdb make
|              run check
| seems to hang.
| This is under Fedora fc10  (x86_64) with current updates.  If more 
| diagnostic
| information is needed, please tell me.

This problem was also reported here:

  https://www-old.cae.wisc.edu/pipermail/bug-octave/2009-January/007770.html

as I said, I can't reproduce the crash, but the test does occasionally
hang or fail for me.  I don't know what is causing it.

jwe