glibc questions re Secure Pointers

[Robert Bernecky <bernecky at acm dot org>]

My apologies in advance if this is addressed to the wrong group...
I'm dusting off Greg McGary's Bounded/Secure Pointers work,
and have run into a number of problems in glibc:

a. I attempted to build a vanilla gcc/glibc from recent sources, then
   to run "make -i check" on glibc. I got the following errors,
   whereas the web pages suggest the tests should run clean:

gccdev@cobra:~/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD > grep Error makecheck.log
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/iconvdata/bug-iconv1.out] Error
1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/iconvdata/bug-iconv2.out] Error
1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/iconvdata/tst-loading.out]
Error 139 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_mblen.out] Error
1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_mbrlen.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_mbrtowc.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_mbsrtowcs.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_mbstowcs.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_mbtowc.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_swscanf.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_wcrtomb.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_wcsrtombs.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_wcstombs.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_wctob.out] Error
1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst_wctomb.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/bug-iconv-trans.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/localedata/tst-wctype.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/catgets/tst-catgets.out] Error
1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/catgets/test-gencat.out] Error
1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/stdlib/tst-fmtmsg.out] Error 1
(ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/stdio-common/tst-swprintf.out]
Error 1 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/stdio-common/test-vfprintf.out]
Error 139 (ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/wcsmbs/tst-btowc.out] Error 1
(ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/grp/testgrp.out] Error 1
(ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/posix/tst-getconf.out] Error 1
(ignored)
make[2]: [/home/gccdev/NSP/GLIBC/BUILD/io/test-lfs.out] Error 1
(ignored)

Can someone please advise if these errors are, at present,
"known bugs" or not? I note that most of the tests don't have an
abstract in them stating "This code is intended to test xyz;
if it works properly, blah blah..."; I'd find such abstract to be
quite useful.

b. I'm trying to find out where __alloca() and __locale[] get defined.
I'm chasing a pointer-related problem in __alloca, and am
also attempting
to comprehend the locale structure and interface, but am running into
dead ends with grep and gdb. I'm probably missing something obvious
here, and would appreciate an assist or a navigational aid.

Thanks,
Bob

Robert Bernecky                  Snake Island Research Inc.
bernecky@acm.org                 18 Fifth Street, Ward's Island
+1 416 203 0854                  Toronto, Ontario M5J 2B9 Canada
http://www.snakeisland.com