This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Agile Buzz by James Robertson. Original Post: VW issue on Linux 2.6.x kernels Feed Title: Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants Feed URL: http://www.cincomsmalltalk.com/rssBlog/rssBlogView.xml Feed Description: James Robertson comments on Cincom Smalltalk, the Smalltalk development community, and IT trends and issues in general. Latest Agile Buzz Posts Latest Agile Buzz Posts by James Robertson Latest Posts From Cincom Smalltalk Blog - Smalltalk with Rants

We've seen reports of VisualWorks crashing on 2.6.x (x86) kernels with a segmentation fault. I've just gotten a message from engineering that pinpoints the problem:

There's a kernel patch floating around that implements a kernel barrier to executing code at addresses that fall into the stack or data segments of the process. The intention is to provide a safety net for stack frame overflow attacks. The 2.6.8-1.521 kernel from FC2 uses this patch, as well as several others that muck around with the exec shield system. Since VW runs on FC2 using 2.6.7-1.494.2.2 which also contains the exec shield patch, I suspect that one of the suplementary patches is causing this problem.

This exec check can be globally disabled by executing the following as root:

#> echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/exec-shield

Now, we've also heard that the JVM has issues on the 2.6.x kernels; it's likely the same kind of problem. We'll have to address this in the future, but for now, try the suggestion above.