RE: [Axiom-developer] Axiom crashing in Zope-Plone

[Page, Bill]

Cam,

The original report from Hans:

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2004-09/msg00056.html

referred to what later was discovered to be a seg fault
(EXITSTATUS:139 from Python 2.2 popen3) generated by Axiom
when run as a sub-process (popen3). Hans later reported that
the failure occured while running a debian binary version
of Axiom on an Intel i386 box.

In

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2004-09/msg00059.html

Bob McElrath reported that he obtained the same failure
when trying to run a debian binary version of Axiom as a
sub-process on an Alpha debian system. It also turned
out that Bob observed the seg fault even when Axiom was
not run as a sub-process.

In the message

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2004-09/msg00062.html

and

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2004-09/msg00064.html

Hans reported success on the same hardware platform and
debian version but with Axiom re-compiled from source.

In

  http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/axiom-developer/2004-09/msg00065.html

Bob McElrath supplied some details of the debian and
axiom installation on his Alpha system which was still
failing with a seg fault.

Your suggested possible cause being "libc et.al dynamic
dependencies" in the case of Bob's system seems plausible
to me. I expect he will get back to you about this soon.

----------

Since Hans' problem was solved with a re-compile of Axiom
from source (and a different, older? version of gcl) on a
debian Intel platform, I would worry that this might
indicated a memory management problem which is more severe
when Axiom is run as a sub-process - perhaps with limited
physical memory since Python + Zope + LaTeX + +Ghostscript
+ Axiom is a pretty heavy combination.

Hans said that he would be busy with his "day job" for
the next week but that he intended to try to build the
MathAction configuration again from scratch to see he
he gets the same problem and solution.

Thanks for looking into this!

Regards,
Bill Page.

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Camm Maguire [mailto:address@hidden
> Sent: Tuesday, September 28, 2004 2:21 PM
> To: Bob McElrath
> Cc: address@hidden; Bill Page; 'Hans Peter Wuermli'
> Subject: Re: [Axiom-developer] Axiom crashing in Zope-Plone
> 
> 
> Greetings!  Haven't heard anything here -- just wondering if this
> issue is still live.
> 
> Take care,
> 
> Camm Maguire <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > Greetings!  My apologies, but I've lost the head of this 
> thread.  I'm
> > assuming that there is a segfault problem with debian alpha axiom
> > (unstable).  (GCL is built in btw).  I'm also assuming the problem
> > shows up on startup.  In this case, I cannot reproduce -- just
> > downloaded the binaries and installed on 
> escher.debian.org's unstable
> > dchroot.  Of course you can only run these on Debian testing or
> > unstable due to the libc et.al dynamic dependencies.  Is that the
> > problem?  If any of this is close, please fill in a 
> detailed way I can
> > reproduce the crash, or better yet, send a copy both to me 
> and to the
> > Debian BTS.  'reportbug' is good for this.
> > 
> > For the package to build, btw, the compiled axiom must successfully
> > run the full input test suite, so the very existence of the alpha
> > package means that this was done.  You can find a log on
> > buildd.debian.org if interested.
> > 
> > Take care,
> > 
> > Bob McElrath <address@hidden> writes:
> > 
> > > Bill Page address@hidden wrote:
> > > > Hans,
> > > > 
> > > > Do I understand correctly that after re-compiling Axiom that
> > > > you now have a fully operational LatexWiki system under debian
> > > > that can run Axiom? If so, congratulations! I think there are
> > > > a number of other people (including Tim Daly :) who would very
> > > > much like to setup a similar stand alone LatexWiki/Axiom system.
> > > 
> > > And me!
> > > 
> > > But we really need to have people setting this up in a 
> chroot jail.  I
> > > have been reading up on this...we need a script to create 
> the jail.
> > > 
> > > > I promised Tim that I would set something up for this, but I
> > > > have not yet had the time. If you have some time to write up a
> > > > short description of how you did it, I think it would be most
> > > > appreciated.
> > > 
> > > I would like to distribute axiom support with LatexWiki.  
> I have tied my
> > > version numbers to ZWiki, and they will release 0.35 on 
> 10/1.  Do you
> > > think we could add this by then?  (or maybe a bit after 
> to ensure 0.35
> > > compatability)
> > > 
> > > Bill our darcs repos have diverged, your patches no 
> longer apply cleanly
> > > to latexwiki.  I have moved the functions 'runCommand' 
> and 'log' into
> > > util.py so that they can be used by axiom/reduce.  There 
> are a couple
> > > other conflicts too (I improved plone/stylesheet in 
> latexwiki.css).  Why
> > > do you have a font-size +2 in your latexwiki.css?  Will 
> you have time to
> > > merge this in the next week or two?
> > > 
> > > FYI, I have gotten MathML/LatexWiki working in Plone::
> > > 
> > >     http://mcelrath.org/Plone/ITeXTest
> > > 
> > > You will need my zwiki patches to do that::
> > > 
> > >     http://bob.mcelrath.org/darcs/zwiki
> > > 
> > > Hopefully I will get those into ZWiki 0.35 but I haven't 
> been able to
> > > get Simon's attention in the last couple of days.  ;)  As 
> a reminder my
> > > latexwiki repo is here::
> > > 
> > >     http://bob.mcelrath.org/darcs/latexwiki
> > > 
> > > > Did you download the binary version of Axiom that failed from
> > > > debian unstable? If so, we should be sure to let Camm Maguire
> > > > know since he is the architect of the debian version. What
> > > > version of GCL are you using for the re-compile? What is the
> > > > hardware platform that you are using?
> > > 
> > > Mine is a debian binary::
> > > 
> > >     (0)<address@hidden:~> dpkg -l axiom
> > >     Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
> > >     | 
> Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-
> installed
> > >     |/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems 
> (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
> > >     ||/ Name              Version           Description
> > >     
> +++-=================-=================-======================
> ============================
> > >     ii  axiom             0.20040831-1      A general 
> purpose computer algebra system: main bi
> > >     (0)<address@hidden:~> axiom
> > >     Segmentation fault
> > > 
> > > This is the alpha architecture.
> > > 
> > > If I understand correctly, GCL is compiled-in?  I do not 
> have gcl itself
> > > installed on this machine.
> > > 
> > > --
> > > Cheers,
> > > Bob McElrath [Univ. of California at Davis, Department of Physics]
>