[erlang-bugs] R14B02+ crashes on older hardware, Windows XP

[Mikael Pettersson]

sgm writes:
 > We have a field data collection application recently re-written to use
 > CouchDB. It requires minimal computer resources, so a number of the
 > notebooks we use are circa 2001/2002. All run Windows XP with SP2 or
 > SP3, and we are using CouchDB 1.1.
 > 
 > On the older machines, Erlang R14B02 and R14B03 crash almost
 > immediately upon running werl or erl. R14B01 does not.
 > 
 > I'm attaching a screenshot of the crash on one of the machines. In all
 > cases it happens at the same point, almost immediately, is 100%
 > reproducible, and no crash dump is generated.
 > 
 > Here are the machines where it crashes:
 > 
 > Dell Inspiron 2500, 1.0GHz Pentium III, 160MB RAM, system summary
 > rctc11.txt attached
 > Dell Inspiron 2600, 1.06GHz Celeron, 128MB RAM, system summary
 > rctc12.txt attached
 > Gateway Solo 9300, 750MHz Pentium III, 160MB RAM, system summary
 > rctc16.txt attached
 > 
 > For comparison, I'm also including this machine of similar vintage
 > which does NOT crash:
 > 
 > Dell Inspiron 2650, 1.7GHz Pentium 4, 256MB RAM, system summary
 > rctc13.txt attached

You need to rebuild the Erlang VM with the --enable-ethread-pre-pentium4-compatibility
option.

This is a big ugly bug in the Erlang VM.