Re: Bug with initDatabase()

[mrk@aps.anl.gov (Marty Kraimer)]

> From denali!greene Tue Jul 11 15:42 CDT 1995
> From: <greene%denali.UUCP@cub.kscorp.com>
> Subject: Bug with initDatabase()
> To: <tech-talk@aps.anl.gov>
> Date: Tue, 11 Jul 1995 14:40:32 -0600 (MDT)
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> I've encountered a bug while porting EPICS to the Hytec CAMAC controller.
> The problem is in initDatabase() which is called by iocInit().  The
> interesting part is how this function ever worked.
>
> The problem is in the first call to ellFirst().  If there are no
> records defined for a specific type, then the field precLoc->preclist
> is null.  However, the call to ellFirst() does not check for this
> condition and will return a garbage pointer.  This works fine with
> the NI VXI cpu030 card because the data at 0x0 is also 0x0 which causes
> the for-loop to continue with the next record type.  However, with
> the Hytec card, 0x0 is the start of EPROM which contains non-zero
> data.
>
> Obviously I can easily fix this by checking for a null preclist value
> but I'm curious how this works on other controllers.  I'm also concerned
> with other areas in the EPICS code which might pass a null ELLLIST value
> to ellFirst().

I just looked at the code. A few ststements above the call to ellFirst is
the statement

    if(!precLoc->preclist) continue

Thus if no records exist the call to ellFirst will never be made.

Marty Kraimer