Re: [matplotlib-devel] debugging python code

[Andrew S. <str...@as...>]

Jochen Voss wrote:

>I get the following output:
>
>    voss@plonk [~/src/mpl/test] ./test.py --numarray   
>    fisch
>    Floating point exception
>
>Thank you very much,
>Jochen
>  
>

It sounds like you may have hit a nasty glibc bug that caused me much 
head scratching over the months.  Check this thread:

http://aspn.activestate.com/ASPN/Mail/Message/numpy-discussion/2207861

Bottom line:

numarray does The Right Thing and attempts to set up floating point 
exception handling, but older versions of glibc (such as that in Debian 
sarge) have a bug whereby the floating point error bits in the SSE are 
not  properly cleared, leading to a SIGFPE terminating the program the 
next time the SSE unit is used.

One solution:

Rebuild glibc with the appropriate patch.