g_malloc() segfault in glib 2.12?

[Aleksander Morgado <gtk-list aleksander es>]

Hi all,

I am experiencing a segfault in calling g_malloc() inside a multi-threaded application, using glib2-2.12.3-2.fc6 (default one in RHEL5.2). The glib slice allocator is being used.

My understanding is that g_malloc() will actually abort if no memory allocation can be done, but the signal I see in the core files is SIGSEGV, not SIGABRT. Can I assume then that the problem was not lack of memory available? In fact, the app is running in a 16GByte RAM machine, and I can see the program using around 0.1%, so I don't think that is the cause. Also, the amount of memory that was being requested was just 14 bytes.

My question is, has anyone experienced this before? Or, has there been any special fix in the slice allocator regarding some problem like this since release 2.12? I am thinking in launching the app with G_SLICE=always-malloc to avoid the slice allocator, but not sure if this may reduce the problem.

Cheers,
-Aleksander