Pagefault and cpu hog abends in comn.nss BSTMarkXLocal code

  • 3001257
  • 16-Jun-2006
  • 27-Apr-2012

Environment

Novell NetWare 6.5 Support Pack 5
Particular hardware does not apply. This problem can happen on any hardware and configuration.

Situation

The file server would constantly abend when accessing the nss filesystem in the COMN.NSS' BST_MarkXLocal routine. A bad pointer that was supposed to point to the root beast object for the particular filename in question was null. This code is in the hardlinks functionality for nss. The server does not have to have hardlinks enabled to run into this problem. The problem was that one of the variables used to calculate the root beast pointer for the file was not initialized correctly. This was indicated by the fact that the pointer was a different number everytime it was passed in to BST_MarkXLocal .

Resolution

This file will be released in the next support pack for NetWare 6.5.
There is a new comn.nss for Netware 6.5 sp5 and one for the post sp5 update nw65nss5a.exe.
Netware 6.5 sp5 = 05/31/2006  03:47 PM           587,561 comn.nss
Post sp5--nw65nss5a.exe = 05/31/2006  03:41 PM           587,749 comn.nss
It is important that the correct module be loaded for the corresponding version of nss either shipping sp5 or the post sp5 patch. This file can be copied into the c:\nwserver directory.  You can rename the existing comn.nss to preserve it. The server will then have to be rebooted. Once the server is backup, type modules comn.nss at the server console to make sure that the correct comn.nss is loaded.
These files can be obtained from Novell support. They are included in a file called COMNXLOCAL.EXE.

Status

Reported to Engineering