Segmentation fault(Core Dumped)

That's a really strange place in the I/O of the file for it to blow up!  You've obviously read millions of records and still plugging along.  But here's some things to check:

1)  Are you reading fixed length blocks or lines of text?  If you're reading lines of text MAKE SURE that the buffer is at least 2 characters longer than the longest line that you expect to read and that the record length in the fread() is shorter than the buffer length.  Also make sure that you use fread() and NOT fgets().

2)  How much memory managment (malloc(), free()) are you performing between reads?  While there is no problem mixing I/O and memory management, you could be allocating a buffer that's too small.

3)  Do you know the contents (or line number) where the application is bombing?  Make sure that the data at that location is not corrupt.


Sorry I can't give specifics, but there are pretty good general places to start.

Kdo

Thanks Kdo

I am using fread (buffer,1,sizeof(usage_struct),pFile) to read the record. The Record is of fixed length.

Memory to the structure is allocated only once before entring into the loop and the same structure is used in the loop.

The contents are in a binary file and I cannot verify by manually looking at it. Is there some wayto verify this.

I tried the smaller file and found that it is processing upto end but it crashes at the last record. The 30 GB which is processed is actually the size of the ouput file (a ascii file generated as output by the program).

Thanks
Sant Singh

Thanks Kdo

I am using fread (buffer,1,sizeof(usage_struct),pFile) to read the record. The Record is of fixed length.

Memory to the structure is allocated only once before entring into the loop and the same structure is used in the loop.

The contents are in a binary file and I cannot verify by manually looking at it. Is there some wayto verify this.

I tried the smaller file and found that it is processing upto end but it crashes at the last record. The 30 GB which is processed is actually the size of the ouput file (a ascii file generated as output by the program).

Thanks
Sant Singh

"The last record" -- that's usually a pretty telling event.

Check your end-of-file processing.  make sure that you close the file and drop any buffers after processing the data.

Perhaps end-of-file processing uses your input structure (buffer) for some other purpose and overflows it?

I don't know what trace capabilities you've got.  I think that I'd start by creating a test file that consists of the last 3 or 4 records and process it.  The add a few printf() statements to the code until you isolate the problem.


Good Luck,
Kent

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