"alloc_sub_basic: NULL source string! This should not happen"

[Andreas]

I got this error with samba-3.0.8pre2. In the logs:

[2004/11/01 15:19:07, 0] lib/substitute.c:alloc_sub_basic(507)
  alloc_sub_basic: NULL source string!  This should not happen
[2004/11/01 15:19:07, 0] lib/fault.c:fault_report(36)
  ===============================================================
[2004/11/01 15:19:07, 0] lib/fault.c:fault_report(37)
  INTERNAL ERROR: Signal 11 in pid 20928 (3.0.8pre2)
  Please read the appendix Bugs of the Samba HOWTO collection
[2004/11/01 15:19:07, 0] lib/fault.c:fault_report(39)
  ===============================================================
[2004/11/01 15:19:07, 0] lib/util.c:smb_panic2(1403)
  PANIC: internal error
[2004/11/01 15:19:07, 0] lib/util.c:smb_panic2(1411)
  BACKTRACE: 14 stack frames:
   #0 smbd(smb_panic2+0x7c) [0x81e165c]
   #1 smbd(smb_panic+0x1a) [0x81e185a]
   #2 smbd [0x81ce458]
   #3 [0xffffe420]
   #4 smbd(push_ascii_fstring+0x2a) [0x81cc4fa]
   #5 smbd [0x80910d2]
   #6 smbd(api_reply+0x23a) [0x8095e7a]
   #7 smbd(reply_trans+0x5f4) [0x808cc44]
   #8 smbd [0x80d3844]
   #9 smbd(process_smb+0x16a) [0x80d3c2a]
   #10 smbd(smbd_process+0x145) [0x80d4915]
   #11 smbd(main+0x4e7) [0x8257fe7]
   #12 /lib/tls/libc.so.6(__libc_start_main+0xe0) [0xb7c23e20]
   #13 smbd [0x80786d1]

Unfortunately, I'm not able to reproduce it anymore. The only thing I did
(as I remember, of course) was to make a change to a share, issue
"smbcontrol smbd reload-config" and then access the server via
smbclient -L server -N which returned:

# smbclient -L server -N
Anonymous login successful
Domain=[DOMAIN] OS=[Unix] Server=[Samba 3.0.8pre2]

        Sharename       Type      Comment
        ---------       ----      -------
Error returning browse list: Call returned zero bytes (EOF)
Anonymous login successful
(...)

This would happen everytime smbclient was called in that way until I fully
restarted smbd and nmbd.

If I happen to be able to reproduce this, I'll open a bugzilla ticket with
all the details. For now, this is what I have.