[vtk-developers] vtkImageConvolve crashes when malloc fails

[Berk Geveci]

If memory allocation fails, you will run into a crash sooner or later
unfortunately. Even if you were to add such a check, somewhere down
the pipeline some other class is going to die. IMHO, the only
"graceful" way of handling this is to throw an exception that the
application catches. Then it would have to report an error and shut
down. Adding bunch of if statements for an exceptional case is
probably not a good idea.

-berk

2008/6/3 Mathieu Coursolle <mcoursolle at rogue-research.com>:
> Hi VTK developers,
> I am performing a series of filters, where some of them are
> vtkImageConvolve.
> My input vtkImageData is usually close to 100Mbytes, and the execution of my
> pipeline
> seems to cause some memory fragmentation. Therefore, malloc will eventually
> fail, causing
> a crash in vtkImageConvolve.
> If malloc fails during the execution of a pipeline, then the scalarPointer
> of the resulting vtkImageData is NULL. If a connected vtkImageConvolve
> filter receives such a vtkImageData
> as its input, it tries to access the scalar pointer (which is NULL), causing
> a crash.
> A solution would be to check the pointers:
>   // ADDED CODE BEGIN--------
>   // Make sure the scalar pointers are valid.
>   if (!inData[0][0]->GetScalarPointer() || !outData[0]->GetScalarPointer())
>     {
> vtkErrorMacro(<< "Execute: input and/or output image does not have any
> scalar value.");
>     return;
>     }
>   // ADDED CODE END--------
>
>
>
>   switch (inData[0][0]->GetScalarType())
>     {
>     vtkTemplateMacro(
>       vtkImageConvolveExecute(this, inData[0][0],
>                               static_cast<VTK_TT *>(inPtr), outData[0],
>                               static_cast<VTK_TT *>(outPtr),
>                               outExt, id, inInfo));
>     default:
>       vtkErrorMacro(<< "Execute: Unknown ScalarType");
>       return;
>     }
> So I was wondering,
> 1) Is that the right way to avoid such crashes?
> 2) I guess that problem might occur with other filters as well...
> Thanks.
> Mathieu
>
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