Hi Dave,
our dump-analysis hosts are still running RHEL6 and I recompile 'crash' from the
latest sources myself. To my surprise, crash-7.2.2 built on 
RHEL6 host segfaults immediately when I run 'mount' command. When I compiled it on
a newer system (Ubuntu 16.04), it works fine on the same 
vmcores!
Just in case, I have built crash-7.2.2 again (on RHEL6 host) without any extra options,
just running 'make' after unpacking it. It still 
segfaults on all vmcores I tried (RHEL5, RHEL6, RHEL7). The only command that triggers the
segfault is 'mount', all other commands work fine.
Interestingly enough, 32-bit version of crash-7.2.2 built on the same RHEL6 host works
fine (when using 32-bit vmcores).
I suspect that there is some kind of memory corruption in crash-7.2.2 (array out of
boundaries?) that is just hidden when building it on 
newer hosts due to changes in glibc.
Everything worked fine on RHEL6 with all previous versions of crash, we have been using
7.2.1 for long time.
Unfortunately, running crash under GDB does not reveal any details
{alexs 8:30:30} gdb --args /home/alexs/tools/crash-7.2.2/crash vmlinux vmcore.1
Python Exception <type 'exceptions.ImportError'> No module named gdb:
warning:
Could not load the Python gdb module from `/usr/local/share/gdb/python'.
Limited Python support is available from the _gdb module.
Suggest passing --data-directory=/path/to/gdb/data-directory.
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.8.1
Copyright (C) 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <
http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu".
Type "show configuration" for configuration details.
For bug reporting instructions, please see:
<
http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/bugs/>.
Find the GDB manual and other documentation resources online at:
<
http://www.gnu.org/software/gdb/documentation/>.
For help, type "help".
Type "apropos word" to search for commands related to "word"...
Reading symbols from /home/alexs/tools/crash-7.2.2/crash...done.
(gdb) r
Starting program: /home/alexs/tools/crash-7.2.2/crash vmlinux vmcore.1
crash 7.2.2
Copyright (C) 2002-2017  Red Hat, Inc.
Copyright (C) 2004, 2005, 2006, 2010  IBM Corporation
Copyright (C) 1999-2006  Hewlett-Packard Co
Copyright (C) 2005, 2006, 2011, 2012  Fujitsu Limited
Copyright (C) 2006, 2007  VA Linux Systems Japan K.K.
Copyright (C) 2005, 2011  NEC Corporation
Copyright (C) 1999, 2002, 2007  Silicon Graphics, Inc.
Copyright (C) 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002  Mission Critical Linux, Inc.
This program is free software, covered by the GNU General Public License,
and you are welcome to change it and/or distribute copies of it under
certain conditions.  Enter "help copying" to see the conditions.
This program has absolutely no warranty.  Enter "help warranty" for details.
GNU gdb (GDB) 7.6
Copyright (C) 2013 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
License GPLv3+: GNU GPL version 3 or later <
http://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html>
This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it.
There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.  Type "show copying"
and "show warranty" for details.
This GDB was configured as "x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu"...
       KERNEL: vmlinux
     DUMPFILE: vmcore.1  [PARTIAL DUMP]
         CPUS: 14
         DATE: Fri Nov 15 07:35:35 2013
       UPTIME: 35 days, 05:06:01
LOAD AVERAGE: 491.43, 489.99, 485.49
        TASKS: 941
     NODENAME: gbrpsrmd0085
      RELEASE: 2.6.32-131.6.1.el6.x86_64
      VERSION: #1 SMP Mon Jun 20 14:15:38 EDT 2011
      MACHINE: x86_64  (2892 Mhz)
       MEMORY: 64 GB
        PANIC: "SysRq : Trigger a crash"
          PID: 0
      COMMAND: "swapper"
         TASK: ffff88101ca394c0  (1 of 14)  [THREAD_INFO: ffff88081cba2000]
          CPU: 5
        STATE: TASK_RUNNING (SYSRQ)
crash> set scroll off
crash> mount
     VFSMOUNT         SUPERBLK     TYPE   DEVNAME   DIRNAME
ffff88101c916080 ffff88081c837400 rootfs rootfs    /
Program received signal SIGSEGV, Segmentation fault.
0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()
(gdb) bt
Python Exception <type 'exceptions.ImportError'> No module named
gdb.frames:
#0  0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()
#1  0x0000000000000000 in ?? ()
Regards,
Alex
On 2018-05-16 03:37 PM, Dave Anderson wrote:
 Download from: 
http://people.redhat.com/anderson
                   or
                 
https://github.com/crash-utility/crash/releases
 The github master branch serves as a development branch that will contain
 all patches that are queued for the next release:
    $ git clone 
git://github.com/crash-utility/crash.git
 Changelog:
   - Fix to support Linux 4.16-rc1 and later ARM64 kernels, which
     fail during session initialization with the error message
     "crash: cannot determine page size".  The failure to determine
     the page size is due to the combination of the following kernel
     commits:
       - Linux 4.6 commit 6ad1fe5d9077a1ab40bf74b61994d2e770b00b14
         arm64: avoid R_AARCH64_ABS64 relocations for Image header fields
       - Linux 4.10 commit 4b65a5db362783ab4b04ca1c1d2ad70ed9b0ba2a
         arm64: Introduce uaccess_{disable,enable} functionality based on TTBR0_EL1
       - Linux 4.16 commit 1e1b8c04fa3451e2b7190930adae43c95f0fae31
         arm64: entry: Move the trampoline to be before PAN
     (takahiro.akashi(a)linaro.org)
   - Fix the search for the booted kernel on a live system to prevent
     selecting the unusable "vmlinux.o" file found in private build
     directories.  Without the patch, the non-executable vmlinux.o file
     may be selected, and the resulting fatal error message indicates a
     somewhat misleading "crash: cannot resolve _stext".
     (bhsharma(a)redhat.com, anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Implemented a new "ps -A" option that restricts the task output to
     just the active tasks on each cpu.
     (atomlin(a)redhat.com)
   - As the first step in optimizing the is_page_ptr() function, save
     the maximum SPARSEMEM section number during initialization, and
     use it as the topmost delimeter in subsequent mem_section searches.
     Also allow for per-architecture machdep->is_page_ptr() plugin functions.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Implemented the x86_64 machdep->is_page_ptr() plugin function.  If
     the kernel is configured with CONFIG_SPARSEMEM_VMEMMAP, the plugin
     function optimizes the mem_section search, reducing the computation
     effort and time consumed by commands that repeatedly call the
     is_page_ptr() function on large-memory systems.
     (k-hagio(a)ab.jp.nec.com)
   - Fixes for 32-bit X86 "bt" command on kernels that have been compiled
     with retpoline gcc support.  Without the patch, backtraces may fail
     with the error message "bt: cannot resolve stack trace", followed by
     the text symbols found on the stack and possible exception frames.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Fix the "help foreach" argument list to include the new
"gleader"
     task qualifier option that was added in version 7.1.2.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - VMware VMSS dumpfiles contain the state of each vCPU at the time
     when the VM was suspended.  This patch enables crash to read the
     relevant registers from each vCPU state for use as the starting hooks
     by the "bt" command.  Also, support for "help -[D|n]" to display
     dumpfile contents, and "help -r" to display vCPU register sets has
     been implemented.  This is also the first step towards implementing
     automatic KASLR offset calculations for VMSS dumpfiles.
     (slp(a)redhat.com)
   - Commit 45b74b89530d611b3fa95a1041e158fbb865fa84 added support for
     calculating phys_base and the mapped kernel offset for KASLR-enabled
     kernels on SADUMP dumpfiles by using a technique developed by Takao
     Indoh. Originally, the patchset included support for kdumps, but this
     was dropped in v2, as it was deemed unnecessary due to the upstream
     implementation of the "vmcoreinfo device" in QEMU.  However, there
     are still several reasons for which the vmcoreinfo device may not be
     present at the time when a memory dump is taken from a VM, ranging
     from a host running older QEMU/libvirt versions, to misconfigured VMs
     or environments running Hypervisors that doesn't support this device.
     This patchset generalizes the KASLR-related functions from sadump.c
     and moves them to kaslr_helper.c, and makes kdump analysis fall back
     to KASLR offset calculation if vmcoreinfo data is missing.
     (slp(a)redhat.com)
   - Fix for the "bt" command on 4.16 and later kernels size in which the
     "thread_union" data structure is not contained in the vmlinux file's
     debuginfo data.  Without the patch, the kernel stack size is not
     calculated correctly, and defaults to 8K.  As a result "bt" fails
     with the message "bt: invalid RSP: <address> bt->stackbase/stacktop:
     <address>/<address> cpu: <number>".
     (efault(a)gmx.de)
   - Fix for the x86_64 "bt" command for kernels that are configured with
     CONFIG_FRAME_POINTER.  Without the patch, the per-text-return-address
     framesize cache may contain invalid entries for functions that have
     an "and $0xfffffffffffffff0,%rsp" instruction in their prologue,
     which aligns the stack on a 16-byte boundary; therefore any cached
     framesize for a text-return-address in such a function may be
     incorrect depending upon the alignment of the stack address of a
     calling function.  If an invalid cached framesize is utilized by
     "bt", the backtrace may skip over several frames, or may display
     one or more invalid (stale) frames.  The patch introduces a new
     cache that contains functions for which framesize values should
     not be cached.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
     
   - Speed up the "bt" command by avoiding the text value cache that
     was put in place many years ago when the crash utility supported the
     analysis of remote dumpfiles using the deprecated "crash daemon"
     running on the remote host.  The performance improvement will be
     most noticable when running the first instance of "foreach bt",
     where there would often be a "hitch" when it was determining the
     framesize of kernel module text return addresses.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Optimization of the crash startup time and "ps" command processing
     time when analyzing dumpfiles/systems with extremely large task
     counts.  For example, running with a dumpfile containing over a
     million tasks, startup time and "ps" processing time was reduced
     from 90 minutes to less then 40 seconds.
     (gthelen(a)google.com)
   - Speed up the "ps -r" option by stashing the length of the
     task_struct.rlim or signal_struct.rlim array in the internal
     array_table[].  Without the patch, the length of the array
     is determined by a call to the embedded gdb module for each
     task, and as a result, the command takes a minute or more
     per 1000 tasks.  With the patch applied, it only takes about
     0.5 seconds per 1000 tasks.
     (k-hagio(a)ab.jp.nec.com)
   - Added a new "tree -l" option for the rbtree display, which dumps
     the tree sorted in linear order, starting with the leftmost node and
     progressing to the right.  Also, if a corrupted rb_node pointer is
     encountered, do not fail immediately, but rather display the rb_node
     address and the corrupt pointer and continue.
     (neelx(a)redhat.com)
   - Display a fatal error message if the "tree -l" option is attempted
     with radix trees.  Without the patch, the option would be silently
     ignored.
     (neelx(a)redhat.com)
   - Introduction of a new "bpf" command that displays information about
     loaded eBFP (extended Berkeley Packet Filter) programs and maps.
     Because of its upstream fluidity, the capabilities of this command
     will be an ongoing task.  In its initial form, the command displays
     the addresses, basic information, and key data structures of eBPF
     programs and maps.  It also translates the bytecode, and disassembles
     the jited code, of loaded eBPF programs.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Fixes to address several gcc-8.0.1 compiler warnings that are generated
     when building with "make warn".  The warnings are all false alarm
     messages of type [-Wformat-overflow=], [-Wformat-truncation=] and
     [-Wstringop-truncation]; the affected files are extensions.c, task.c,
     kernel.c, memory.c, remote.c, symbols.c, filesys.c and xen_hyper.c.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Fix for the "ps -a" option for a user task that has utilized
     "prctl(PR_SET_MM, ...)" to self-modify its memory map such
     that the stack locations of its command line arguments and
     environment variables such are not contiguous.  Without the
     patch, the command may fail with a dump of the crash utility's
     internal buffer usage statistics followed by "ps: cannot allocate
     any more memory!".
     (k-hagio(a)ab.jp.nec.com)
   - Fix for a compilation error on ARM64.  Without the patch, the
     compilation of the new bpf.c file fails with the error message
     "bpf.c:881:18: error: conflicting types for 'u64'"
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Fix for an s390x session initialization-time warning that indicates
     "WARNING: cannot determine MAX_PHYSMEM_BITS" on Linux 4.15 and later
     kernels containing commit 83e3c48729d9ebb7af5a31a504f3fd6aff0348c4,
     which changed the data type of "mem_section" from an array to a
     pointer.  Without the patch, the s390x manner of determining
     MAX_PHYSMEM_BITS fails because it presumes that "mem_section" is
     an array, and as a result, displays the warning message.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Fix for the determination of the ARM64 phys_offset value when
     running live against /proc/kcore.  Without the patch, the message
     "WARNING: cannot access vmalloc'd module memory" may be displayed
     during session initialization, and vmalloc/module memory will be
     unaccessible.  (It should be noted that at the time of this patch,
     the upstream version of /proc/kcore does not work correctly for
     ARM64, because PT_LOAD segments for unity-mapped blocks of physical
     are not generated.)
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - For live system analysis, if both "/dev/mem" and the
"/dev/crash"
     memory driver do not exist, try to use "/proc/kcore".  Without
     the patch, the session fails immediately with the error message
     "crash: /dev/mem: No such file or directory".
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Fix, and an update, for the "ipcs" command.  The fix addresses an
     error where IPCS entries are not displayed because of a faulty
     read of the "deleted" member of the embedded "kern_ipc_perm"
data
     structure.  The "deleted" member was being read as a 4-byte integer,
     but since it is declared as a "bool" type, only the lowest byte gets
     set to 1 or 0.  Since the structure is not zeroed-out when allocated,
     stale data may be left in the upper 3 bytes, and the IPCS entry
     gets rejected.  The update is required for Linux 4.11 and greater
     kernels, which reimplemented the IDR facility to use radix trees
     in kernel commit 0a835c4f090af2c76fc2932c539c3b32fd21fbbb, titled
     "Reimplement IDR and IDA using the radix tree".  Without the patch,
     if any IPCS entry exists, the command would fail with the message
     "ipcs: invalid structure member offset: idr_top"
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Second stage of the new "bpf" command.  This patch adds additional
     per-program and per-map data for the "bpf -p ID" and "bpf -m ID"
     options, containing data items shown by the "bpftool prog list"
     and "bpftool map list" options; new "bpf -P" and "bpf
-M" options
     have been added that dump the extra data for all loaded programs
     or tasks.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Fix for a compilation error of the new "bpf.c" file when building
     on older host systems where CLOCK_BOOTTIME does not exist.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Fix for infrequent failures of the x86 "bt" command to handle cases
     where a user space task with "resume_userspace" or
"entry_INT80_32"
     at the top of the stack, or which was interrupted by the crash NMI
     while handling a timer interrupt.  Without the patch, the backtrace
     would be proceeded with the error message "bt: cannot resolve stack
     trace", and then dump the text symbols found on the stack and all
     possible exception frames.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Trivial formatting fix to "bpf" help page.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Fix the "bpf" command display on Linux 4.17-rc1 and later kernels,
     which contain two new program types, BPF_PROG_TYPE_RAW_TRACEPOINT
     and BPF_PROG_TYPE_CGROUP_SOCK_ADDR.  Without the patch, the dynamic
     header string created for bpf programs overran into the bpf map
     header, creating one long combined header string.
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
   - Updates for the presumption that system call names begin with "sys_".
     In Linux 4.17, x86_64 system calls may begin with "__x64_sys", where,
     for example, "sys_read" has been replaced by "__x64_sys_read".
     (anderson(a)redhat.com)
     
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