NAME

       error::fault - memory access faults

DESCRIPTION

       Read  or  write faults can occur during the operation of a systemtap script, if the script
       causes dereferencing of a pointer that turns out to be invalid.  This  can  be  caused  by
       using  context variables that do not happen to have valid values, or perhaps references to
       memory that is unavailable at that moment due to paging.

       These fault conditions are benign because they are caught by the systemtap runtime,  which
       cleanly  terminates  the  script.  If quick termination is not desired, consider using the
       --skip-badvars or --suppress-handler-errors or -DMAXERRORS=NN stap  options,  or  wrapping
       relevant parts of the probe handlers in a try/catch block.

       It  may  be  possible  to  adjust  the  target program, to make it more likely that needed
       context variables are paged in when  systemtap  looks  for  them.   Consider  adding  some
       lightweight processing on the key variables, like a strlen(foo) for a string, or iterating
       across elements of an array or linked list, or touching a few bytes  of  a  heap-allocated
       block.   The  idea  is  to trigger any page faults in the target program, before systemtap
       would need to (but can't).

SEE ALSO

       stap(1),
       error::reporting(7stap)

                                                                              ERROR::FAULT(7stap)