Description of problem:

When executing iotop, it sometimes crashes almost immediately with a python traceback. The traceback is:

[root@xx ~]# iotop
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/bin/iotop", line 16, in <module>
    main()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/iotop/ui.py", line 249, in main
    curses.wrapper(run_iotop, options)
  File "/usr/lib64/python2.5/curses/wrapper.py", line 44, in wrapper
    return func(stdscr, *args, **kwds)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/iotop/ui.py", line 205, in run_iotop
    ui.run()
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/iotop/ui.py", line 95, in run
    self.process_list.duration)
  File "/usr/lib/python2.5/site-packages/iotop/ui.py", line 198, in refresh_display
    self.win.addstr(i + 2, 0, lines[i].encode('utf-8'))
_curses.error: addstr() returned ERR

This occurred while the prelink process was running. Unfortunately I don't have the output, but when I did a "ps -ef" I remember seeing an awk script process with some "??????" in the script. Could those may have been non-printable characters that were causing iotop to crash?


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

[root@xx ~]# rpm -q --info iotop | head -4
Name        : iotop                        Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version     : 0.2.1                             Vendor: Fedora Project
Release     : 1.fc10                        Build Date: Wed 09 Jul 2008 07:01:54 AM EDT
Install Date: Wed 10 Dec 2008 10:43:42 PM EST      Build Host: xenbuilder4.fedora.phx.redhat.com


How reproducible:

Not very. I'm not sure how to reproduce it. I think it may have something to do with processes with non-printable characters. The prelink daily job may start an awk script that crashes it. That is just a guess however.