Bus Error – and I didn’t even know I was riding.

01Jul08

I’ve been doing quite a bit with python, django, and Google app engine lately. In a word, it’s awesome, but more to come on that later.

I use Mac OS X 10.5.3 right now with python 2.5.2. Very often, python simply dies with the cryptic “Bus Error,” which I can only assume means that something very dramatic has happened. It’s surprising and somewhat frustrating to realize just how much drama there is on my computer.

I thought I had it licked by installing DarwinPorts and compiling python with a different version of readline (the word is that the readline lib that ships with Mac is bad).

However, as I was writing this post and used the interpretter to check my python version, it crapped out when I exited with a simple “exit()”.

Back to the drawing board I guess.

Update 2008-07-08: I found another resource on the topic. I’m not sure which of the steps in this post helped, but my python is much more stable now.

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4 Responses to “Bus Error – and I didn’t even know I was riding.”  

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  1. 1 Eron Wright on July 20, 2008 said:

    Ah, the futility of your stuggle! Join me and the dark side, mua ha ha!

    Seriously, for a man who’s been through the hell of classpath issues, you are well prepared for the road ahead. :)

    Reply
  2. 2 todd on September 5, 2008 said:

    I’ve just encountered this problem while using the pdb debugger. This happened both with the system install of python2.5, a mac ports install of python2.5 and a python2.4. What’s up? Did you come to any conclusions?

    Another interesting point is, this is a brand new mac 10.5, and I already spent a couple days developing on it, using the pdb debugger with no crashes.

    Best,
    T

    Reply
  3. 3 phoenix on October 30, 2008 said:

    Dunno if u’re struggling still, but these are the latest headlines on the abominable ‘Bus Error’ – or at least, that’s as far as I could trace it:

    https://weblion.psu.edu/trac/weblion/wiki/MacPorts
    https://trac.macports.org/ticket/13930#comment:description

    Reply
  4. 4 Dan Fairs on March 31, 2009 said:

    Glad you found my post useful.

    You’re probably right in that it was readline that was causing the problem. I suspect it didn’t work for you first time around when you installed the new readline because you didn’t have the Makefile hack, and hence your shiny new readline lib wouldn’t actually have been used! Tweaking the Makefile as described means that the version from MacPorts actually gets used.

    Cheers,
    Dan

    Reply

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