BDB corrupt

[Kurt J. Lidl]

On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 10:06:21PM +0100, James Mansion wrote:
> Kurt J. Lidl wrote:
>> There are known problems with certain keys corrupting the DB 1.8x
>> series code.  In fact, the "release" of the 1.86 was an attempt
>> to solve this problem when the KerberosV people at MIT found
>> a repeatable key insert sequence that would corrupt things.
>> (Or at least that's what I remember, it was a long time ago, and
>> I might have the details wrong.)
>>   
> Have to say its a little concerning that such 'mature' code is actually 
> problematic.
> Particularly since I'm not aware of a non-LGPL alternative.
>
> Do you have anything by way of a pointer?  Google didn't help me here.

This is somewhat alluded to here:
  http://www.mail-archive.com/kerberos@mit.edu/msg01560.html
  You might want to read the entire thread on that issue.

There is the comment in the Oracle web pages about 1.86 vs 1.85:
  http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/berkeley-db/db/index.html
  "Do not upgrade to the 1.86 release other than to fix specific hash access
  method problems found in the 1.85 release."

And in the "Berkeley DB: A Retrospective" paper
  (http://sites.computer.org/debull/A07Sept/seltzer.pdf), Margo notes:

  "Db-1.85 enjoyed widespread adoption after its release with 4.4BSD.
  In particular, both the MIT Kerberos project and the University of
  Michigan LDAP project incorporated it. A group at Harvard released a
  minor patch version db-1.86 for the Kerberos team in 1996."

So, I think my recollection is correct.

-Kurt