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Full Discussion: Bus Error
Top Forums UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers Bus Error Post 10252 by Perderabo on Saturday 10th of November 2001 04:57:39 PM
Old 11-10-2001
Quote:
Originally posted by tonyt
I only know that if one trys to access a memory which in a readonly segment, the system will bumpup a Bus Error signal.
By "access" I guess you mean trying to store something there. Not to belabor the obvious, but it is legal to read a read-only segment.

There are two signals that can be delivered to a process that attempts something with an illegal memory address:

SIGBUS (ksh will say Bus error(coredump))
SIGSEGV (ksh will say Memory fault(coredump))

I've been looking through my library and I can't find any documentation that states which signal must be delivered under a specific condition. It may be that some versions of unix only use one or the other for everything. The kernel really depends on the cpu to catch these and it may be that some cpu's simply have a single trap to handle all bad addresses.

Still to me these errors have slightly different meanings, although I must admit that this is based mostly on C programming in an HP-UX environment.

SIGBUS means that you have asked to cpu to do something that is impossible. More to the point, the cpu can catch this error immediately by looking at the virtual address. There is no need to even attempt to convert the virtual address to a physical address. This is why cpu's bother to have a two-tiered check on an address. Converting a virtual address to a physical address can be a somewhat expensive operation.

SIGSEGV means that you have asked the cpu to do something that is illegal. If the kernel wanted to, it could fiddle with things to render the attempted operation legal. This error is caught after the attempted conversion of the virtual address to a physical address.

I would tend to expect that the situation tonyt is describing would result in a SIGSEGV rather than a SIGBUS....except that if you have a pointer that is both misaligned and in the wrong segment, you won't get both signals, you only get a SIGBUS. If an int is 4 bytes on your system and you try to store an int at random addresses in a read-only segment, then yes 75% of the time you will get a SIGBUS, while 25% of the time your pointer is aligned and you get the SIGSEGV.

Still tonyt may have a system that works differently than mine. And if a system can only deliver a single signal for address problems, SIGBUS would be my choice.
 

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SIGNAL(2)							System Calls Manual							 SIGNAL(2)

NAME
signal - catch or ignore signals SYNOPSIS
#include <signal.h> (*signal(sig, func))() (*func)(); DESCRIPTION
A signal is generated by some abnormal event, initiated either by user at a typewriter (quit, interrupt), by a program error (bus error, etc.), or by request of another program (kill). Normally all signals cause termination of the receiving process, but a signal call allows them either to be ignored or to cause an interrupt to a specified location. Here is the list of signals with names as in the include file. SIGHUP 1 hangup SIGINT 2 interrupt SIGQUIT 3* quit SIGILL 4* illegal instruction (not reset when caught) SIGTRAP 5* trace trap (not reset when caught) SIGIOT 6* IOT instruction SIGEMT 7* EMT instruction SIGFPE 8* floating point exception SIGKILL 9 kill (cannot be caught or ignored) SIGBUS 10* bus error SIGSEGV 11* segmentation violation SIGSYS 12* bad argument to system call SIGPIPE 13 write on a pipe or link with no one to read it SIGALRM 14 alarm clock SIGTERM 15 software termination signal 16 unassigned The starred signals in the list above cause a core image if not caught or ignored. If func is SIG_DFL, the default action for signal sig is reinstated; this default is termination, sometimes with a core image. If func is SIG_IGN the signal is ignored. Otherwise when the signal occurs func will be called with the signal number as argument. A return from the function will continue the process at the point it was interrupted. Except as indicated, a signal is reset to SIG_DFL after being caught. Thus if it is desired to catch every such signal, the catching routine must issue another signal call. When a caught signal occurs during certain system calls, the call terminates prematurely. In particular this can occur during a read or write(2) on a slow device (like a typewriter; but not a file); and during pause or wait(2). When such a signal occurs, the saved user sta- tus is arranged in such a way that when return from the signal-catching takes place, it will appear that the system call returned an error status. The user's program may then, if it wishes, re-execute the call. The value of signal is the previous (or initial) value of func for the particular signal. After a fork(2) the child inherits all signals. Exec(2) resets all caught signals to default action. SEE ALSO
kill(1), kill(2), ptrace(2), setjmp(3) DIAGNOSTICS
The value (int)-1 is returned if the given signal is out of range. BUGS
If a repeated signal arrives before the last one can be reset, there is no chance to catch it. The type specification of the routine and its func argument are problematical. ASSEMBLER
(signal = 48.) sys signal; sig; label (old label in r0) If label is 0, default action is reinstated. If label is odd, the signal is ignored. Any other even label specifies an address in the process where an interrupt is simulated. An RTI or RTT instruction will return from the interrupt. SIGNAL(2)
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