Unsafe embedded Perl (was RE: [Mimedefang] [PATCH] Memleak bug in mimedefang found and fixed)

[David F. Skoll]

On Fri, 4 Jun 2004, Kelson Vibber wrote:

> I can confirm this as well.  RH 7.3 with Perl 5.6.1 and MD 2.43.  We
> actually just started using the embedded Perl a few days ago (and our
> several-times-a-day high load spikes vanished completely), and this message
> does show up in our logs.

If you read the configure.in script, you'll see that I test for
the safety of destroying and recreating an embedded Perl interpreter by
actually doing it *exactly* according to the perlembed man page.
On many platforms, this segfaults!

I will be changing the multiplexor so that when you run:

	md-mx-ctrl reread

you get a warning message if you're using the embedded Perl interpreter
on an unsafe platform.  That should help bring the problem to light
more quickly.

Regards,

David.