[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Wed, Dec 18, 2002 at 03:20:34PM -0500, Jason House wrote:
> Inside of epan/packet.c the line "data_source_chunk =
> g_mem_chunk_new("data_source_chunk", sizeof (data_source), 10 * sizeof
> (data_source),G_ALLOC_AND_FREE);" is causing a crash on my computer...
> 
> I don't know why this line would cause trouble.

Because something's scribbling over memory?

> Here's the complete call stack:
> 
> NTDLL! 77fcb03d()

Probably an NT system call - I suspect it may be allocating more memory.

> MSVCRT! 780010a8()
> MSVCRT! 78001045()

Perhaps 78001045 is "malloc()" and 780010a8 is some internal routine
used by MSVC++'s malloc.

If something allocates memory and writes past the end of the allocated
chunk, it runs the risk of trashing somebody's data structures -
including the data structures used by the memory allocator to keep track
of free memory blocks.

Whether a given memory-overwrite causes a crash in malloc depends on the
memory allocator, so the bug may have different symptoms on other OSes
(or no symptoms at all, if you're unlucky).