Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System

Benjamin Franksen <[email protected]> · Mon, 4 Aug 2014 13:07:13 +0200

When I run my sequencer tests (the latest version on the 2.2 branch with 
the latest version of base from the 3.15 branch), I get this:

A call to 'assert(ellCount(&pnotifyGlobal->freeList)==0)'
    by thread 'bittypesTest' failed in ../../../src/ioc/db/dbNotify.c 
line 304.
EPICS Release EPICS R3.15.0.1-DEV $$Date$$.
Local time is 2014-08-04 12:02:02.162795955 CEST
Please E-mail this message to the author or to [email protected]
Calling epicsThreadSuspendSelf()

This is quite interesting because it happens exactly at the point where 
previously my tests used to sometimes hang. Normally I could Ctrl-C them 
and re-start and then everything runs through. This time the failure 
seems to be reproducible.

BTW, the way the EPICS base version of assert behaves here is not very 
helpful. The definition from the standard library would give me a core 
dump which I could load into a debugger.

Anyway, I experimentally removed the assert definition in base and re-
compiled. Since the tests now continue to run instead of hanging, I see 
that I consistently get the same failure for three test programs. In all 
three cases, the actual tests never fail: the failure happens only when 
the IOC gets shut down. Here is the output when running only the first 
test program that exhibits the assertion failure:

franksen@tiber: ...test/validate/O.linux-x86 > perl bittypes.t
Starting iocInit
############################################################################
## EPICS R3.15.0.1-DEV $$Date$$
## EPICS Base built Aug  4 2014
############################################################################
iocRun: All initialization complete
Sequencer release 2.1.16, compiled Mon Aug  4 12:20:39 2014
Spawning sequencer program "bittypesTest", thread 0x99f5960: 
"bittypesTest"
bittypesTest[0]: all channels connected & received 1st monitor
1..24
ok  1 - sizeof((i8)) == 1
ok  2 - sizeof((ui8)) == 1
ok  3 - sizeof((i16)) == 2
ok  4 - sizeof((ui16)) == 2
ok  5 - sizeof((i32)) == 4
ok  6 - sizeof((ui32)) == 4
ok  7 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok  8 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok  9 - i8 == _seq_vars_test._seq_vars_conversion.xi8
ok 10 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok 11 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok 12 - ui8 == _seq_vars_test._seq_vars_conversion.xui8
ok 13 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok 14 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok 15 - i16 == _seq_vars_test._seq_vars_conversion.xi16
ok 16 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok 17 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok 18 - ui16 == _seq_vars_test._seq_vars_conversion.xui16
ok 19 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok 20 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok 21 - i32 != _seq_vars_test._seq_vars_conversion.xi32
ok 22 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok 23 - pvstat == pvStatOK
ok 24 - ui32 != _seq_vars_test._seq_vars_conversion.xui32

    Results
    =======
       Tests: 24 
      Passed:  24 = 100.00%
Instance 0 of sequencer program "bittypesTest" terminated
bittypes: ../../../src/ioc/db/dbNotify.c:304: dbProcessNotifyExit: 
Assertion `((&pnotifyGlobal->freeList)->count)==0' failed.

For reproduction, check out (darcs get):

http://www-csr.bessy.de/control/SoftDist/sequencer/repo/branch-2-2

Cheers
Ben
-- 
"Make it so they have to reboot after every typo." â€• Scott Adams

Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System

Experimental Physics and
Industrial Control System