assert failure: Unhandled error from job_process_spawn (or similar)

StacktraceTop:__kernel_vsyscall ()
*__GI_raise (sig=6)
*__GI_abort () at abort.c:92
nih_error_clear () at error.c:300
__run_exit_handlers (status=255, listp=0xaef304,

This is the code that writes the error back to the parent, it doesn't free it again so you get this assertion as the child exits. The parent still gets the error, so everything works as normal, you just get this apport popup

Hi Scott,

Thanks for taking the time to analysis this.

Is there any way to identify the particular process that init/upstart invoked that cause this to occur?

Regards,
Anand

On Mon, 2009-10-26 at 10:40 +0000, Anand Kumria wrote:

> Is there any way to identify the particular process that init/upstart
> invoked that cause this to occur?
>
Yes, Upstart should report an ordinary "failed to start" for this
process - you'll find a message in syslog with the actual error.

Scott
--
Have you ever, ever felt like this?
Had strange things happen? Are you going round the twist?

If the service happens to be gdm, which is set to respawn in ubuntu 9.10, your system will be a flickering mess with a console that´s unusable because of gdm constantly respawning.

The old init system used to disable services that respawned to fast. Can upstart detect this situation and do something smart?

Hmm, unfortunately I only have the last 7 days of syslog -- so I can not see
what the problem was on the 15th Oct.

Is there anything in the report than can help you? If not, might make sense
to close it out.

I'll increase the syslog log retention to 1 month.

Anand

On Mon, Oct 26, 2009 at 11:05 AM, Scott James Remnant
<email address hidden>wrote:

> On Mon, 2009-10-26 at 10:40 +0000, Anand Kumria wrote:
>
> > Is there any way to identify the particular process that init/upstart
> > invoked that cause this to occur?
> >
> Yes, Upstart should report an ordinary "failed to start" for this
> process - you'll find a message in syslog with the actual error.
>
> Scott
> --
> Have you ever, ever felt like this?
> Had strange things happen? Are you going round the twist?
>
> --
> assert failure: Unhandled error from job_process_spawn (or similar)
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/451917
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
>

On Tue, 2009-10-27 at 20:27 +0000, Jens Askengren wrote:

> If the service happens to be gdm, which is set to respawn in ubuntu
> 9.10, your system will be a flickering mess with a console that´s
> unusable because of gdm constantly respawning.
>
Should not be - this is after the error is returned to Upstart, so
Upstart should not respawn the process.

> The old init system used to disable services that respawned to fast. Can
> upstart detect this situation and do something smart?
>
Upstart has respawn limiting

Scott
--
Have you ever, ever felt like this?
Had strange things happen? Are you going round the twist?

0.6.5 2010-02-04 "Our last, best hope for victory"

 * Since libnih has been separated out into its own project, Upstart
   no longer includes its source and now uses the installed version by
   default.

 * The external nih-dbus-tool means that cross-compilation is trivial,
   the path to it may be overriden with NIH_DBUS_TOOL=... as an
   argument to configure. (Bug: #426740)

 * Developers may still build against a local libnih source tree by
   passing --with-local-libnih=/path/to/libnih to configure.

 * There is a new initctl "reload" command, with matching
   /sbin/reload symlink. This sends the SIGHUP signal to the running
   main process of the named job instance.

 * Event operator matches in jobs now support "!=" in addition to the
   usual "=", e.g.:

  start on net-device-added INTERFACE!=eth*

   (Bug: #513035)

 * Moved D-Bus system bus reconnection trigger from SIGHUP to SIGUSR1,
   since SIGHUP is already used for a forced configuration reload and
   causes Upstart to "forget" state.

 * Fixed bug where the default runlevel would be lost when an
   /etc/inittab file exists without an initdefault line. (Bug: #405847)

 * Fixed "Unhandled error" message from shutdown. (Bug: #426332)

 * Fixed "Unhandled error" assertion crash from Upstart child
   processes when failing to spawn a job. (Bug: #451917)

 * No longer holds /dev/console open, so the SAK SysRq key will not
   kill Upstart. (Bug: #486005)

 * Restored sync() call before reboot().

 * Added missing OPTIONS section to init(8) manpage. (Bug: #449883)

This bug was fixed in the package upstart - 0.6.5-1

---------------
upstart (0.6.5-1) lucid; urgency=low

  * New upstream release:
    - libnih has been separated out into its own project.
    - "start on" and "stop on" now support != matches. LP: #513035.
    - Fixed crash in child when unable to spawn job. LP: #451917.
    - No longer holds /dev/console open so SAK won't kill init. LP: #486005.
    - Added missing OPTIONS section to init(8). LP: #449883.

  [ Scott James Remnant ]
  * Build-depend on libnih-dev, libnih-dbus-dev and nih-dbus-tool to use
    the separated out libnih.
    - This has the fix for LP: #436758.
    - Remove changelog.nih from the doc directory.
  * Bump udev build-dependency to 147 to match upstream.
  * udev/Makefile.am: Update to use external libnih

  [ Johan Kiviniemi ]
  * udev/upstart-udev-bridge.c: Change -device-remove to -device-removed to
    match -device-added and -device-changed. LP: #516698.
 -- Scott James Remnant <email address hidden> Thu, 04 Feb 2010 16:30:10 -0800