See Ubuntu bug report https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ghostscript/+bug/130842 Ghostscript works fine on 32-bit and on amd64, but on ia64 it crashes immediately with a segfault, even simple calls like "gs" or "gs -h" crash. gdb backtrace: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ... Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault. #0 0x200000000178b000 in strncat () from /lib/libc.so.6.1 (gdb) bt #0 0x200000000178b000 in strncat () from /lib/libc.so.6.1 #1 0x20000000003b8b50 in gs_main_init_with_args (minst=0x6000000000004230, argc=1, argv=0x60000fffff01fa58) at ./src/imainarg.c:214 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The impact is very high, as on ia64 it is impossible now to print on non-PostScript printers and one cannot even build the complete distro, as many packages use Ghostscript to build documentation.
Probably, this is a problem with a particular distribution or even a particular installation. Ghostscript HEAD compiles and runs just fine on an Itanium box provided by HP testdrive. > uname -a Linux td178.testdrive.hp.com 2.6.18-8.1.6.el5 #1 SMP Fri Jun 1 18:52:04 EDT 2007 ia64 ia64 ia64 GNU/Linux > gcc --version gcc (GCC) 4.1.1 20070105 (Red Hat 4.1.1-52)
Works fine on a SUSE 10 box: td187:~> uname -a Linux td187 2.6.16.27-0.9-default #1 SMP Tue Feb 13 09:35:18 UTC 2007 ia64 ia64 ia64 GNU/Linux td187:~> gcc --version gcc (GCC) 4.1.0 (SUSE Linux) td187:~> cat /proc/cpuinfo processor : 0 vendor : GenuineIntel arch : IA-64 family : Itanium 2 model : 1 revision : 5 archrev : 0 features : branchlong cpu number : 0 cpu regs : 4 cpu MHz : 1400.000000 itc MHz : 1400.000000 BogoMIPS : 2097.15 siblings : 1 Also works on FreeBSD: td150.testdrive.hp.com> uname -a FreeBSD td150.testdrive.hp.com 6.2-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.2-RELEASE #0: Sat Jan 13 04:30:24 UTC 2007 root@pluto2.freebsd.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC ia64 td150.testdrive.hp.com> gcc --version gcc (GCC) 3.4.6 [FreeBSD] 20060305 I'm out of the orange smoke. Ghostscript works for me on ia64.
The problem was in the libpaper support patch of the Debian/Ubuntu packages (missing "#include <paper.h>"). The problem does not affect the unpatched Ghostscript.