trouble with slapd overlay

[Helmut Schulz <helmut@thalion-graphics.de>]

Hello all,

hope I picked the appropriate mailing list  ...

I've got a problem with a slapd overlay I'm currently working at:
the overlay causes slapd to bomb, when compiled for & running on Debian
Etch AMD64 and Ubuntu Dapper (no other 64bit experiences so far), if - and
only if so - it's response handler is invoked simultaneously in several
threads.
The error always occurs at the same code line, line 89, in file
template_symtab.c: the memory location referred by 'symtab',
which has been allocated immediately before by ch_malloc(), is obviously
invalid.
As long as only one single thread is hitting this code piece,
everything is fine.

In 32bit-environments, the overlay works.

The overlay has (mutex-protected) critical sections of code: an
overlay-specific cache, which, however, doesn't influcence the test
behaviour (I usually deactivate it via config file directive (see inline
comments in file template.c) to avoid the additional complexity).
What I want to say: I almost for sure can exclude thread synchronization 
issues within my overlay as reason ... but somehow, the memory management 
seems to get confused, no clue why.

I tried valgrind - it run's slapd fine, no sigsegv, no trouble, no related
error messages. When the MALLOC_DEBUG_ environment variable is set, slapd runs 
great, too. Simple replacement of ch_malloc() and friends by stdlib malloc() 
and free() bypasses the problem as well.

Maybe I've coded a memory overrun somewhere else within the overlay? Maybe I 
did not understand the slapd memory management API (which, seriously, seems 
to be a real pain! - I tried to use ch_malloc()/ch_strdup()/ch_free() where 
possible, use proper nesting of these functions - only exception was memory 
allocated by backend_attribute(), which I deallocate via 
ber_bvarray_free_x(), using the current thread's memory context).

On the other hand, maybe the problem is related to ch_malloc() and the 
underlying memory management itself?

The source code can be found here:

http://www.thalion-graphics.de/download/template-overlay.tar.gz

Would be very grateful for any advice. :)



-- 
Helmut Schulz
Thalion Graphic Solutions eK.