Mariano,
 
Actually, I bought a laptop for two reasons: (1) they "went and got cheap" while I wasn't looking, so there was absolutely no reason for me not to have one at these prices and capabilities; (2) to put Ubuntu on it so I'd have a Linux box with me.
 
The bottom line: a segmentation fault.  I saved the text to a file and will check it for anything that I dare not release (passwords, etc.) and then can post it if it will help.
 
There has been no debug log that I can find, at least not associated with these crashes - like I said, they're ugly.  The two worst things, IMHO, that a computer can do are freeze, and a close second is to simply quit w/o saying why.
 
Understood about a bug in ODBC, but that does not explain why the earlier image has no troubles.  I might have not loaded things correctly, maybe there is a new version of the package that breaks something.  However, Pharo should give me some clues vs. just rolling over and disappearing from RAM w/o a trace.
 
Respectfully, I do think it is a Pharo/FFI problem, if only that something can crash it so easily and completely with no diagnostic data.
 
More to come, and I like Indian food, so if I have to eat crow, I'd appreciate a good hot vindaloo :)
 
Minor disagreements aside, THANKS for your reply.  The command-line idea was very helpful (I should have thought of it, and will next time).
 
Bill



From: pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr [mailto:pharo-project-bounces@lists.gforge.inria.fr] On Behalf Of Mariano Martinez Peck
Sent: Friday, October 02, 2009 7:10 PM
To: Pharo-project@lists.gforge.inria.fr
Subject: Re: [Pharo-project] Ugly crashes in 09.09.3 - any ideas?



2009/10/2 Schwab,Wilhelm K <bschwab@anest.ufl.edu>
I moved my code into 09.09.3 web, and it is crashing badly - the vm just dies, no indication (that I have found) as to why.  Reminds me of working in C on 16 bit systems  =:(
 

If you are in Linux, run it from command line so that you cansee the output on it ?  If you are in Windows, you can see the dump file ?.

what about the PharoDebug.log ?
 
By sneaking up on the crash, I see that it is quitting when asking ODBCConnection to connect.

Please, don't understand me wrong, but probably you have a "bug" in your ODBC driver. I have A LOT of segmentation faults while developing SqueakDBX. And ALWAYS was mine problem (wrong order of calls, or whatever) or an OpenDBX (ODBC C library in your case) problem. 

I don't think it is a FFI or Pharo related problem.
 
  At one point, just inspecting a handle is enough to blow away the vm.  Suggestions would be appreciated.  I might set up a new image with just ODBC to try to reproduce it.
 

Yeah. Take a clean and latest PharoCore and try to load it there. 

Best,

Mariano
 
Bill
 
 

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