[Ferret-talk] Segmentation Faults

Jens Kraemer
Fri, 24 Nov 2006 09:24:49 -0000

Hi!

On Thu, Nov 23, 2006 at 06:57:01PM -0500, Tom Davies
wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I am using Ferret 0.9.4 and my index appears to be corrupt as any
> attempt to read or write it causes a segmentation fault.  I had been
> using it with minimal problems for the past few months.
>
> Is there a way to fix this without rebuilding the entire index?  Since
> I am on a shared host ferret takes too much memory to rebuild these
> roughly 8500 records in one go and in the past I have had to rebuild
> them in batches.

I don''t know of a way to fix the index without rebuilding it.

> Also, is there a way to trap when ferret segfaults using rescue?  I
> have had to disable searching for the time being on my site until I
> get this worked out since every search will segfault and kill my fcgi.

Imho a seg fault is far too low level to be caught on the ruby side.

> I am actually considering switching to Mysql full text search just for
> stability reasons, but if there was a good technique for combating
> these segfaults I would rather stick with Ferret.
>
> NOTE: I did try running with ferret 0.10.13 but I was getting a bunch
> of segfaults just rebuilding my indexes.

that''s strange, maybe we should try to find the problem in this area.
Ferret''s API changed in sometimes subtle ways from 0.9 to 0.10, and
segfaults often happen when using the API in a wrong way (i.e.
unexpected argument types and things like that).

cheers,
Jens

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