Ims_master Core Dumps Causing Message Store to be Restarted (Doc ID 1611882.1)

Last updated on MARCH 29, 2023

Applies to:

Symptoms

An ims_master process crashed, dumping core. On Messaging Server before version 6.0, this would eventually result in the store hanging due to orphaned locks. On 6.0 or later, it causes watcher to restart the message store and access related processes. But because the core dump is related to a specific bad address in a message in the queue, it is likely to happen again, frequently enough for watcher to stop restarting the store.

Using pstack on the core dump showed it was caused by thread like:

----------------- lwp# 5142 / thread# 5142 --------------------
ffffffff7cddcb68 _lwp_kill (6, 0, ffffffff7cf497e8, ffffffffffffffff, ffffffff7cf3e000, 0) + 8
ffffffff7cd4c1c0 abort (1, 1d8, 0, 1f1f4c, 0, 0) + 118
ffffffff7cd4c464 _assert (ffffffff7e071ed8, ffffffff7e071c80, 508, 0, 1f1c04, ffffffff7f608394) + 74
ffffffff7e01f244 userattr_get_attrs (100592b80, ffffffff51ffd718, ffffffff7e17e278, 0, 0, 87) + ac
ffffffff7e01f160 userattr_get (100592b80, ffffffff51ffd718, 0, 0, 0, 0) + 48
ffffffff7e01c448 autocreate (100592b80, ffffffff7ddec128, 0, ffffffff51ffda28, 0, 0) + 2e8
0000000100006338 mailbox_deliver (ffffffff51ffea60, 100592b80, 0, 0, 0, ffffffff51ffe977) + 4b8
0000000100004ba4 deliver_thread (ffffffff51ffe94e, ffffffff51ffe84d, 0, 0, 1000043c0, 1) + 7e4
ffffffff7cdd8afc _lwp_start (0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0)

The abort/assert call is due to an address which is longer than the maximum valid address.

Looking at the core with the dbx "where" command shows the userid, which is one of the arguments to several of the above function calls. The address is clearly invalid.

Changes

The customer has a FORWARD mapping table which is designed to send a copy of each message to another MTA for brief disaster recovery retention.

The specific end user, probably by accident, had also used multiple methods to forward mail to himself, thereby creating a mail loop.

Cause

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