Applications crash with "free(): invalid pointer" errors after updating glibc-32bit

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Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 4 (SLES 11 SP4)

Situation

After updating to the latest glibc-32bit from the update channels applications fail to launch and crash with the backtrace showing the following:

*** glibc detected *** application_name: free(): invalid pointer: 0x087b0040 ***
======= Backtrace: =========
/lib/libc.so.6(+0x71f04)[0xf3f64f04]
/lib/libc.so.6(+0x73813)[0xf3f66813]
/lib/libc.so.6(cfree+0x6d)[0xf3f699bd]
/lib/libnss_dns.so.2(_nss_dns_gethostbyname4_r+0x26b)[0xf3ea8b3b]
/lib/libc.so.6(+0xc2dd8)[0xf3fb5dd8]
/lib/libc.so.6(getaddrinfo+0x1b4)[0xf3fb8c64]
...

Resolution

Export and set the RTLD_DEEPBIND environment variable to 0.

Cause

Previously the condition that causes a call to malloc in libresolv was only satisfied under exceptional circumstances, now it is always true.

Additional Information

To export the variable simply from the command line execute: export RTLD_DEEPBIND=0

Disclaimer

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