Re: Strange CVSListBox behavior

From:
=?Utf-8?B?UnVzbGFuIFNoY2hlcmJhdHl1aw==?= <RuslanShcherbatyuk@discussions.microsoft.com>
Newsgroups:
microsoft.public.vc.mfc
Date:
Tue, 20 Apr 2010 02:26:01 -0700
Message-ID:
<06124504-5690-443C-9F79-D3DDDD1D09E9@microsoft.com>
Hector, this 128 is just small test code for reproducing of error OUTSIDE of
MFC internals (inside of my OnInitDialog), just for my convenient
reproducing. If I remove this code at all the same will be inside of MFC
internals, the difference, that in this code I can clearly observe buffer
changes (there are 44 bytes that is written instead of 22).
So that should not work...

"Hector Santos" wrote:

Rusian,

Change the lines to:

   char buffer[128] = { 0 };
   int nLen = ::GetWindowTextLength(list_custom_indmin.m_hWnd);
   ::GetWindowText(list_custom_indmin.m_hWnd, buffer, 128);

to:

   CString sBuffer;
   list_custom_indmin.GetWindowText(&sBuffer);

and that should work.

Ruslan Shcherbatyuk wrote:

BTW, looks like number of bytes returned by ::GetWindowText is about exactly
2 times bigger than ::GetWindowTextLen had returned. My application is
non-unicode, may be CVSListBox is somehow incompatible with non-unicode apps
or I forget to do some 'special' initialization, like InitCommonCotrols or
like this?

Anyway I can use it in my non-unicode app by applying ctrl.SetWindowText("")
before its OnPaint hander inside of OnInitDialog of hosting PropertyPage.

"Joseph M. Newcomer" wrote:

See below...
On Mon, 19 Apr 2010 14:41:01 -0700, Ruslan Shcherbatyuk
<RuslanShcherbatyuk@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

New information and I still have no idea what is the problem or how to find it.
I had used OnIdle and _heapchk() and assertion not happens.

Below is a callstack of heap corruption moment:

     ComputerZal.exe!_free_dbg_nolock(void * pUserData=0x02183d28, int nBlockUse=0x00000001) Line 1376 + 0x3b bytes C++
    
ComputerZal.exe!_free_dbg(void * pUserData=0x02183d28, int
nBlockUse=0x00000001) Line 1265 + 0xd bytes C++
    ComputerZal.exe!free(void * pUserData=0x02183d28) Line 49 + 0xb bytes C++
    ComputerZal.exe!CAfxStringMgr::Free(ATL::CStringData * pData=0x02183d28)
Line 169 + 0x9 bytes C++
    ComputerZal.exe!ATL::CStringData::Release() Line 116 + 0x17 bytes C++
    ComputerZal.exe!ATL::CSimpleStringT<char,0>::~CSimpleStringT<char,0>()
Line 289 C++
    ComputerZal.exe!ATL::CStringT<char,StrTraitMFC<char,ATL::ChTraitsCRT<char>
::~CStringT<char,StrTraitMFC<char,ATL::ChTraitsCRT<char> > >() Line 1213

+ 0x8 bytes C++
    ComputerZal.exe!CVSListBoxBase::OnPaint() Line 333 + 0xf bytes C++
    ComputerZal.exe!CWnd::OnWndMsg(unsigned int message=0x0000000f, unsigned
int wParam=0x00000000, long lParam=0x00000000, long * pResult=0x001272c8)
Line 2354 C++

The problem is in destructor of CString object of CVSListBoxBase::OnPaint()
method:

............
    CString strCaption;

    if (m_bDefaultCaption)
    {
        GetWindowText(strCaption); // ************
****
This cannot fail. If it is failing, you already have memory damage.
****

     }
    else
    {
        strCaption = m_strCaption;
    }

    dc.DrawText(strCaption, rectText, DT_LEFT | DT_SINGLELINE | DT_VCENTER);

    if (pOldFont != NULL)
    {
        dc.SelectObject(pOldFont);
    }
                 // HERE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
}

Heap corruption appears inside of GetWindowText(strCaption); // ************

void CWnd::GetWindowText(CString& rString) const
{
    ASSERT(::IsWindow(m_hWnd));

#ifndef _AFX_NO_OCC_SUPPORT
    if (m_pCtrlSite == NULL)
    {
#endif
        int nLen = ::GetWindowTextLength(m_hWnd);
        ::GetWindowText(m_hWnd, rString.GetBufferSetLength(nLen), nLen+1);

nLen is returned 0x16, and buffer is allocated of 0x16 bytes but buffer is
actually filled with much more bytes in call to ::GetWindowText.

****
And you know this how? Note that ::GetWindowText takes a maximum buffer length and will
not fill in more characters than the specified length.
****

I reproduced this behavior at the end of OnInitDialog of page where
CVSListBox is placed:

    char buffer[128] = { 0 };
****
First, the use of char is wrong, and the use of a buffer of a fixed size (like 128)
represents Worst Practice. Why did you not use CString here?
****

     int nLen = ::GetWindowTextLength(list_custom_indmin.m_hWnd);
    ::GetWindowText(list_custom_indmin.m_hWnd, buffer, 128);

How the buffer is look like before getting of nLen=0x16 (actually it
received much more bytes):

0x001263E4 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
..................
0x001263F6 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
..................
0x00126408 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
..................
0x0012641A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
..................
0x0012642C 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
..................
0x0012643E 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
..................
0x00126450 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
..................

and after:

00 42 65 7a 4d 46 43 56 53 4c 69 73 74 42 6f 78 00 bf .BezMFCVSListBox.?
0x001263F6 4f 80 89 e3 37 7e 4f e3 37 7e 04 00 00 80 f0 69 12 00
O?.?7~O?7~...??i..
0x00126408 50 65 12 00 04 6a 12 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
Pe...j............
0x0012641A 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
..................
0x0012642C 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
..................
0x0012643E 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
..................
0x00126450 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
..................

****
I've never seen a failure like this on GetWindowText. Essentially, it got a 0-length
string (the initial NUL character), and I have no idea why it would retrieve anything
else, but it shouldn't matter because it did not overrun the buffer

I wonder: did someone implement a WM_GETTEXT handler for CVSListBox that is doing the
wrong thing? That's the first guess I would make. I'd suggest looking at the CVSListBox
source code to see what handlers are in its Message Map, and if there is a WM_GETTEXT, I'd
read its code to make sure the programmer didn't screw up big time. THat's how I'd start
to do the analysis.
                joe
****

As you can see we received much more than 0x16 bytes.

****
Looks like a serious error in the CVSListBox code to me
****

I also put _heapchk() at the end of OnInitDialog() (just before appearing of
ON_PAINT of CVSListBox) and nothing is corrupted inside of heap. There are
also no any threads that can corrupt something and, as I told before
everything is working fine inside of x64 Win 7 where VS2010 is installed.

****
Threads don't matter at all in this case. In fact, if there is an error of the kind I
described, it can happen in a single-threaded app.
****

I'm using remote debugging to observe bug on destination VMWare PC with
WinXP x86 installed.

Any recomendations? What can I try next?

***
See above. There are a scary number of tools between you and the application, and that
makes me worry that anything might be broken.
****

Is it possible that Win7 PC has no this bug because of VS 2010 installation
(may be it has other MFC/COMCTL32 dll's)? Although I am using statical MFC
linking to executable.

****
I'd do a LOT of single-stepping, and, as I said, I'd be very suspect of the CVSListBox
code.

But what you are seeing is supposed to be impossible. Because it has returned a string of
0 length, there should be no other characters in the string.
                joe
****

I will wait for other recomendations and hope that this message has more
information.
"Ruslan Shcherbatyuk" wrote:

Thank you for your comments and sorry for using wrong 'crash' keyword, I will
do more deep debugging using OnIdle heap check technik and will report about
results as soon as I understand something.

"Joseph M. Newcomer" wrote:

(a) My program reports an unhandled exception 0xC0000005 in the function XXXXXX at the
following line:
    <source code here>
I examined the variables, and the value being passed in is 0xCCCCCD8.

[dead giveaway: uninitialized local pointer variable]

(b) My program, which is running under VS2008 without SP1, gave an assertion failure on
line NNNN or file XXXXXX.cpp (here is the function). I have indicated which of the
assertions failed. When I examined the value with the debugger, it was 0 (NULL). The
callback trace to my code is also shown, and the source line from my code is indicated
below
    Something * v;
    ...stuff here...
    v = SomeFunction(...);
    SomeOtherFunction(v); <<== this is the last line issued before the assertion
failure

[dead giveaway: the SomeFunction failed, returned NULL as documented, and you failed to
test for this condition before using the value]

(c) My program, which is running under VS2008 SP1, gave an unhandled exception 0xC80000003
at the following line in the storage allocator:

[dead giveaway: attempting to free something twice, storage damage due to mishandled
bounds on an array store or fetch, etc., especially if the values are given! The source
line usually has comments indicating the reason for the failure, and from this we can
usually make a pretty good guess]

These are meaningful resports. All of the suggestions you give below are equivalent to
the word "crash" in terms of their useful content.

Note in the definition you give, a "crash" of a computer is rather different than a
"crash" of a program under development, and even then the description of "crash" is for
people like my mother, who can't tell an unhandled kernel exception from a heap
corruption; all she knows is her screen turned blue and the letter she was writing is
lost. I expect something a bit more coherent from someone who claims to be a programmer!

Note that all the definitions describe different conditions, which would require different
actions to handle. A non-responding program is quite a different problem from one which
has taken an unhandled exception, or one which has taken an assertion failure. Again, the
audiences are different; programmers are assumed to be capable of distinguishing all these
causes in a report and providing maximum information to allow diagnosis of the problem by
another programmer. So if I report that my program isn't running correctly, what,
exactly, do you think you can do to help me? But if I specifically say what I am
observing, and, as a programmer, tell you the values of the variables involved, I am
giving you the critical information you need to help me. This is a programmers'
newsgroup; I expect a programmer's description of the problem, not the description my
mother would give (she called me up once and said her computer said it had done something
illegal, and should she be concerned? But she was 85 at the time). So when a person who
claims to be a "programmer" says "my program crashed" I expect them to have the minimum
capability of reporting EXACTLY what happened in terms of the executing code!
                joe

On Mon, 19 Apr 2010 13:15:47 -0400, Hector Santos <sant9442@nospam.gmail.com> wrote:

Ok, what do you want to say?

    "My program stopped working."
    "My program popped up GPF box"
    "My program faulted"
    "My program abend"
    "My program aborted"
    "My program refused to run."
    "My program quit for some reason."

Crash is not suppose to describe what exactly happen. Only that
ultimate outcome has occurred.

Google:

   define: crash

   * stop operating; "My computer crashed last night";
     "The system goes down at least once a week"

Webster:

   d) of a computer system, component, or program : to suffer a
      sudden major failure usually with attendant loss of data

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crash

  # Crash (computing), a condition where a program ceases to respond

I actually don't like the Wikipedia insert. It should say:

  # Crash (computing), a condition where a program no longer
    operates correctly or continues to run.

It would be able to the user or developer to find out the reason why
their program crashed (aborted, abend, faulted, stop running, etc,
pick up).

--

Joseph M. Newcomer wrote:

I am SERIOUSLY trying to make people stop using the word "crash" when they do not describe
WHAT happened. Sadly, too many people confuse "assertion failure" with "crash" and NONE
of them actually spend any time in the debugger trying to figure out what went wrong.
                joe

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