When using

Py_GetPath();
Py_SetPath(pypath_w);

near the beginning of a program, Py_SetPath crashes with memory corruption if run on a systems with glibc's MALLOC_CHECK enabled.

The reason is: Py_GetPath and Py_SetPath use different memory interfaces.

• Py_GetPath() calls calculate_path(), which uses PyMem_New() to allocate the memory (see https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/v3.6.0/Modules/getpath.c#L738, assigned to buf first)

• But Py_SetPath() uses PyMem_RawFree() to free the memory (see https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/v3.6.0/Modules/getpath.c#L830).

This error DOES NOT occur on Windows, since for win32 there is a separate implementation, which uses PyMem_RawMalloc (see https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/v3.6.0/PC/getpathp.c#L378).

This error also DOES NOT occur in Python <= 3.5, since PYMEM_FUNCS have been the same as PYRAW_FUNCS (see https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/v3.5.0/Objects/obmalloc.c#L148). This was changed in v3.6.0: PYMEM_FUNCS now is PYOBJ_FUNCS, see https://github.com/python/cpython/blob/v3.6.0/Objects/obmalloc.c#L159.

This error only occurs when running on a system with glibc's MALLOC_CHECK enabled, which seems to be the default st least on CentOS, Fedora and ArchLinux.

Example code and relevant source see below.

Example stack trace
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*** glibc detected *** ./dist/jcollect3: double free or corruption (out): 0x00007fde271ab030 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib64/libc.so.6[0x37f0675e66]
/lib64/libc.so.6[0x37f06789b3]
/tmp/_MEIhKg3kx/libpython3.6m.so.1.0(Py_SetPath+0x15)[0x7fde2d20e825]
./dist/jcollect3[0x4043e2]
./dist/jcollect3[0x402db2]
./dist/jcollect3[0x402fb0]
/lib64/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xfd)[0x37f061ed5d]
./dist/jcollect3[0x401a9e]
======= Memory map: ========

How to reproduce
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

An example for this problem is the bootloader of PyInstaller (as of 2017-08-01).

• Make sure you are running on a Linux distribution having glibc's MALLOC_CHECK enabled.

• Set up a virtual environment (just too keep your system clean)

pip install https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/archive/develop@%7B2017-08-01%7D.zip
echo 'print("Hello")' > test.py
pyinstaller test.py
dist/test/test # run the frozen script

The relevant source of PyInstaller's bootloader is at <https://github.com/pyinstaller/pyinstaller/blob/develop@%7B2017-08-01%7D/bootloader/src/pyi_pythonlib.c#L466\>

New changeset 3d1e2ab by Benjamin Peterson (nurelin) in branch 'master':
bpo-31532: Fix memory corruption due to allocator mix (bpo-3679)
3d1e2ab

New changeset 88d0663 by Benjamin Peterson (Miss Islington (bot)) in branch '3.6':
[3.6] closes bpo-31532: Fix memory corruption due to allocator mix (GH-3679) (bpo-3681)
88d0663

I'm curious. Would you mind to try to run your frozen application using PYTHONMALLOC=debug environment variable on a Python without the fix, to see if you get an error? I'm not sure that the debug hooks on memory allocators are set early enough to detect your specific bug.

https://docs.python.org/dev/using/cmdline.html#envvar-PYTHONMALLOC

Tried your suggestion. Nothing is printed and program still crash.