Crash in initstate_r()

Posted by Zeno on Sat 28 Jan 2006 01:08 AM — 5 posts, 15,021 views.

Zeno USA Sat 28 Jan 2006 01:08 AM #0

I'm trying to run the Phantasia4 source:
http://www.phantasia4.com/download.html (down)
Can be played here: http://www.phantasia4.org

It compiled fine, but when I try to run it, it crashes. Under gdb, it seems to crash in /lib/libc.so.6 in the function initstate_r() which is not part of the source. Anyone know why it's crashing?

In the source, this is the line that calls initstate_r:

   /* seed the random number generator */
    initstate_r (time(NULL), (char *)&randomStateBuffer, STATELEN,
       (struct random_data *)&randData);

David Haley USA Sat 28 Jan 2006 01:19 AM #1

See: http://lists.debian.org/debian-glibc/2006/01/msg00037.html

Are you compiling with gcc 4.1? That could be it. I don't know anything else about this, I just googled for initstate_r and found that...

Zeno USA Sat 28 Jan 2006 01:34 AM #2

I saw that. But no, I'm using gcc 3.3.6.

Zeno USA Thu 02 Feb 2006 01:47 AM #3

Never really figured it out. I ended up using initstate() instead of initstate_r(), as well as srandom() etc. It's running now, but I don't know what effects those changes may have.

David Haley USA Thu 02 Feb 2006 01:56 AM #4

Quote:
The initstate_r function behaves exactly like the initstate function except that it uses and modifies the state in the object pointed to by the fourth parameter instead of the global state.

What that means is that initstate_r is re-entrant, and can be used, for example, in multithreaded applications.

I suspect that multiple simultaneous calls to initstate would cause havoc, since the function apparently uses a single global buffer for its data.