What is a bus error? Is it different from a segmentation fault?

Bus errors are rare nowadays on x86 and occur when your processor cannot even attempt the memory access requested, typically:

  • using a processor instruction with an address that does not satisfy its alignment requirements.

Segmentation faults occur when accessing memory which does not belong to your process. They are very common and are typically the result of:

  • using a pointer to something that was deallocated.
  • using an uninitialized hence bogus pointer.
  • using a null pointer.
  • overflowing a buffer.

PS: To be more precise, it is not manipulating the pointer itself that will cause issues. It’s accessing the memory it points to (dereferencing).

Related Posts:

  1. What is a bus error? Is it different from a segmentation fault?
  2. What causes a segmentation fault (core dump) to occur in C?
  3. What is newline character — ‘\n’
  4. Why does ENOENT mean “No such file or directory”?
  5. segmentation fault : 11
  6. What are .a and .so files?
  7. segmentation fault : 11
  8. Connect: Socket operation on non-socket
  9. Connect: Socket operation on non-socket
  10. What is the difference between read and pread in unix?
  11. What does WEXITSTATUS(status) return?
  12. What can cause a “Resource temporarily unavailable” on sock send() command
  13. Which of sprintf/snprintf is more secure?
  14. Execution of printf() and Segmentation Fault
  15. What is `S_ISREG()`, and what does it do?
  16. Reaching EOF with fgets
  17. segmentation fault using scanf
  18. Segmentation fault- strcat
  19. segmentation fault with strcpy [duplicate]
  20. Implementing Taylor Series for sine and cosine in C
  21. warning: implicit declaration of function
  22. pthread_join() and pthread_exit()
  23. Why should we typedef a struct so often in C?
  24. What is the difference between ++i and i++?
  25. Undefined reference to pthread_create in Linux
  26. Stack smashing detected
  27. Why am I getting “void value not ignored as it ought to be”?
  28. Pointer Arithmetic
  29. Openssl : error “self signed certificate in certificate chain”
  30. How do I create an array of strings in C?
  31. How do function pointers in C work?
  32. Expression must be a modifiable L-value
  33. “Expected expression before ‘ { ‘ token”
  34. How to generate a random int in C?
  35. How do I use valgrind to find memory leaks?
  36. C pointers and arrays: [Warning] assignment makes pointer from integer without a cast
  37. How to print the array?
  38. How to solve the error: assignment to expression with array type
  39. What does “1e” mean?
  40. how to use uint64_t in C [duplicate]
  41. munmap_chunk(): invalid pointer
  42. How do I solve the following errors: “Undefined reference to WinMain”, “[Error] Id returned 1 exit status”?
  43. Warning comparison between pointer and integer
  44. What is the LD_PRELOAD trick?
  45. How do I properly compare strings in C?
  46. How to correctly use the extern keyword in C
  47. How do we check if a pointer is NULL pointer?
  48. how to use wait in C
  49. How do I calculate MB/s & MiB/s?
  50. How to create my own header file in c++?
  51. In C programming, what is `undefined reference`error, when compiling?
  52. double free or corruption (fasttop)
  53. Returning string from C function
  54. error: expected declaration or statement at end of input in c
  55. Why do I get clang: error: linker command failed with exit code 1?
  56. How to convert integer to char in C?
  57. Program received signal SIGPIPE, Broken pipe
  58. How to read from stdin with fgets()?
  59. Why am I getting “array initializer must be an initializer list or string literal”?
  60. What does it mean to write to stdout in C?
  61. what is the unsigned datatype?
  62. #31 expression must have integral type
  63. How do you pass a function as a parameter in C?
  64. Reading a string with scanf
  65. getopt_long() — proper way to use it?
  66. C read file line by line
  67. C read file line by line
  68. Copying a part of a string (substring) in C
  69. Incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘malloc’
  70. Does C have a “foreach” loop construct?
  71. How to solve error: expected identifier or ‘(‘
  72. Reversing a string in C
  73. When a number is written as 0x00… what does the x mean
  74. How to remove the character at a given index from a string in C?
  75. waitpid, wnohang, wuntraced. How do I use these
  76. Split string with delimiters in C
  77. How to pause in C?
  78. (.text+0x20): undefined reference to `main’ and undefined reference to function
  79. Why am I getting this error: “data definition has no type or storage class”?
  80. I’m getting “Invalid Initializer”, what am I doing wrong?
  81. Writing binary number system in C code
  82. Convert char array to string use C
  83. warning: passing argument ’from incompatible pointer type [enabled by default]’
  84. Return a `struct` from a function in C
  85. Why should we check WIFEXITED after wait in order to kill child processes in Linux system call?
  86. Scanning Multiple inputs from one line using scanf
  87. Allocating char array using malloc
  88. Implementation of strtok() function
  89. C fopen vs open
  90. switch case: error: case label does not reduce to an integer constant
  91. warning: incompatible implicit declaration of built-in function ‘printf’ [enabled by default]
  92. warning: return makes pointer from integer without a cast but returns integer as desired
  93. The difference between char * and char[] [duplicate]
  94. How to clear input buffer in C?
  95. Reasoning behind C sockets sockaddr and sockaddr_storage
  96. What primitive data type is time_t? [duplicate]
  97. Usage of \b and \r in C
  98. Parsing command-line arguments in C
  99. Compiler warning – suggest parentheses around assignment used as truth value
  100. lvalue required as increment operand

Leave a Comment

error code: 523