Handling Illegal Accesses and Invalid Page Faults
Illegal accesses and invalid page faults can result in a program crash, segmentation error, bus error or core dump depending on the operating system environment. Often these problems are caused by software bugs, but hardware memory errors, such as those caused by overclocking, may corrupt pointers and make correct software fail.
Operating systems such as Windows and UNIX (and other UNIX-like systems) provide differing mechanisms for reporting errors caused by page faults. Windows uses structured exception handling to report page fault-based invalid accesses as access violation exceptions, and UNIX (and UNIX-like) systems typically use signals, such as SIGSEGV, to report these error conditions to programs.
If the program receiving the error does not handle it, the operating system performs a default action, typically involving the termination of the running process that caused the error condition, and notifying the user that the program has malfunctioned. Recent versions of Windows often report such problems by simply stating something like "this program must close" (an experienced user or programmer with access to a debugger can still retrieve detailed information). Recent Windows versions also write a minidump (similar in principle to a core dump) describing the state of the crashed process. UNIX and UNIX-like operating systems report these conditions to the user with error messages such as "segmentation violation", or "bus error", and may also produce a core dump.
Read more about this topic: Page Fault
Famous quotes containing the words handling, illegal, invalid, page and/or faults:
“Mothers risk alienating their mates if they expect them to hold or care for the baby exactly as they do. Fathers who are constantly criticized or corrected may lose interest in handling the baby, and this is a loss for everyone. The cycle is a dangerous one. Now the same mother feels bitter because she is no longer getting any help at home.”
—Cathy Rindner Tempelsman (20th century)
“Consider the vice president, George Bush, a man so bedeviled by bladder problems that he managed, for the last eight years, to be in the men’s room whenever an important illegal decision was made.”
—Barbara Ehrenreich (b. 1941)
“The invalid is a parasite on society. In a certain state it is indecent to go on living. To vegetate on in cowardly dependence on physicians and medicaments after the meaning of life, the right to life, has been lost ought to entail the profound contempt of society.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“I drink the five o’clock martinis
and poke at this dry page like a rough
goat. Fool! I fumble my lost childhood
for a mother and lounge in sad stuff
with love to catch and catch as catch can.”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Time shall unfold what plighted cunning hides,
Who covers faults at last shame them derides.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)