The following bug has been logged online:

Bug reference: 3866
Logged by: Andrew Gilligan
Email address: andy@tcpd.net
PostgreSQL version: 8.3RC1
Operating system: FreeBSD 4.11
Description: Segfault during table update when using convert_from()
Details:

Greetings,

It seems there exists a bug in the way character set conversion
is handled in some circumstances.

Running the test below results in the server (8.3RC1) segfaulting
every time. I haven't fully explored the extent, but it exists
with (at least) LATIN2 and LATIN9 conversion.

The database and client encoding are both UTF8.

Best regards,
-Andy

-- test case --
test=# CREATE TABLE t (id int, geo text);
CREATE TABLE
test=# INSERT INTO t (id, geo) VALUES (1,
convert_from(decode('50696f74726bf3772c20506f6c616 e64','hex'), 'LATIN9'));
INSERT 0 1
test=# UPDATE t SET geo =
convert_from(decode('50696f74726bf3772c20506f6c616 e64','hex'), 'LATIN9');
UPDATE 1
-- more than 1 row is needed to trigger the error
test=# INSERT INTO t (id, geo) VALUES (2,
convert_from(decode('50696f74726bf3772c20506f6c616 e64','hex'), 'LATIN9'));
INSERT 0 1
test=# UPDATE t SET geo =
convert_from(decode('50696f74726bf3772c20506f6c616 e64','hex'), 'LATIN9');
server closed the connection unexpectedly
This probably means the server terminated abnormally
before or while processing the request.
The connection to the server was lost. Attempting reset: Failed.
!>

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"Andrew Gilligan" <andy@tcpd.net> writes:
> It seems there exists a bug in the way character set conversion
> is handled in some circumstances.

Seems to be the bogus pfree() in pg_convert_from() that's causing
the problem :-(. Take that out and you should be OK.

Thanks for the report!

regards, tom lane

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On 9 Jan 2008, at 23:45, Tom Lane wrote:

> "Andrew Gilligan" <andy@tcpd.net> writes:
>> It seems there exists a bug in the way character set conversion
>> is handled in some circumstances.
>
> Seems to be the bogus pfree() in pg_convert_from() that's causing
> the problem :-(. Take that out and you should be OK.

That's exactly it, thanks... Everything seems fine now.

The fix is trivial, so not sure if a patch is even warranted, but
I've attached the changes just in case.

Best regards,
-Andy






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