[erlang-questions] Segfault on floating point error

[Mikael Pettersson]

Peter A. Smirnoff writes:
 > Hi there !
 > 
 > I have Erlang 5.6.5 installation on Slackware 9.0.
 > 
 > Im trying to do simple thing : divide by zero in erlang shell. Node crashes. The session:
 > 
 > root@REDACTED# erl
 > Erlang(BEAM) emulator version 5.6.5 [source] [async-threads:0] [hipe]
 > 
 > Eshell V5.6.6
 > 1> 1/0.
 > Segmentation fault
 > root@REDACTED#
 > 
 > What's wrong?

Works on e.g. Fedora:

Erlang R13B01 (erts-5.7.2) [source] [smp:2:2] [rq:2] [async-threads:0] [hipe] [kernel-poll:false]

Eshell V5.7.2  (abort with ^G)
1> 1/0.
** exception error: bad argument in an arithmetic expression
     in operator  '/'/2
        called as 1 / 0
2> 

Apparently your system pretends (as far as erts/configure.in is concerned)
to support FP exceptions, but something in it breaks on FP exceptions in
the actual BEAM VM.

Unless you're willing to do some low-level debugging with gdb, you should
rebuild it from scratch with --disable-hipe --disable-fp-exceptions.