It has come to my attention that the extension modules may fail to load when running on older host systems with older compiler/linker versions. This is due to these crash-6.1.3 changes: - Update of the extensions/echo.c extension module example, and the "extend" help page, to utilize a constructor function to call the register_extension() function. The _init() and _fini() functions have been designated as obsolete for usage by dlopen() and dlclose(). The echo.c example module has been modified to contain echo_init() and echo_fini() functions marked as __attribute__((constructor)) and __attribute__((destructor)) respectively. (anderson(a)redhat.com) - Updated extensions/dminfo.c, extensions/snap.c and extensions/trace.c to replace their _init() and _fini() functions with constructor and destructor functions. (anderson(a)redhat.com) I made the change because the dlopen(3) man page has had this section for quite some time now: The obsolete symbols _init and _fini The linker recognizes special symbols _init and _fini. If a dynamic library exports a routine named _init, then that code is executed after the loading, before dlopen() returns. If the dynamic library exports a routine named _fini, then that routine is called just before the library is unloaded. In case you need to avoid linking against the system startup files, this can be done by giving gcc the "-nostart- files" parameter on the command line. Using these routines, or the gcc -nostartfiles or -nostdlib options, is not recommended. Their use may result in undesired behavior, since the constructor/destructor routines will not be executed (unless special measures are taken). Instead, libraries should export routines using the __attribute__((con- structor)) and __attribute__((destructor)) function attributes. See the gcc info pages for information on these. Constructor routines are executed before dlopen() returns, and destructor routines are executed before dlclose() returns. But when making the change, I did not take the "recommendation" to remove the -nostartfiles option, for a couple reasons: (1) Because of what are now "legacy" extension modules that still use _init() and _fini() functions. Those extension modules still require the -nostartfiles option. (2) It didn't make a difference on Fedora 17 systems, which is where I did my testing. However, I do not want to force everybody to update their extension modules. So instead I'm going to modify the extensions/Makefile to grep the C file for the ((constructor)) attribute, and use or not-use the -nostartfiles option based upon that. It should also be noted that this only applies to extension modules that do *not* utilize their own "<module>.mk" makefile. Accordingly, I will be modifying the "snap.mk" file to remove the -nostartfile option, but on the other hand, the "eppic.mk" file can remain unchanged until and unless the owner wants to update it. Since this is important enough, I'll come out with a crash-6.1.4 version shortly. Thanks, Dave