Hi, PetscVFPrintfDefault crashes on using -help on command line due to bad function arguments. Tried this using src/snes/examples/tutorials/ex19, and petsc-dev nightly and petsc-3.3-p1. The stack is given below and the code is not valgrind clean. The debugger told me that in src/ksp/ksp/interface/itcl.c and on this line ksp->pc_side is -1. ierr = PetscOptionsEList("-ksp_pc_side","KSP preconditioner side", "KSPSetPCSide",PCSides,3,PCSides[ksp->pc_side],&indx,&flg);CHKERRQ(ierr); Stack: ..... [help skipped] -ksp_monitor_draw_true_residual: <FALSE> Monitor graphically true residual norm (KSPMonitorSet) -ksp_monitor_range_draw: <FALSE> Monitor graphically range of preconditioned residual norm (KSPMonitorSet) -ksp_monitor_ams: <FALSE> Publish KSP progress using AMS (KSPMonitorSet) [0]PETSC ERROR: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [0]PETSC ERROR: Caught signal number 11 SEGV: Segmentation Violation, probably memory access out of range [0]PETSC ERROR: Try option -start_in_debugger or -on_error_attach_debugger [0]PETSC ERROR: or see http://www.mcs.anl.gov/petsc/documentation/faq.html#valgrind[0]PETSC ERROR: or try http://valgrind.org on GNU/linux and Apple Mac OS X to find memory corruption errors [0]PETSC ERROR: likely location of problem given in stack below [0]PETSC ERROR: --------------------- Stack Frames ------------------------------------ [0]PETSC ERROR: Note: The EXACT line numbers in the stack are not available, [0]PETSC ERROR: INSTEAD the line number of the start of the function [0]PETSC ERROR: is given. [0]PETSC ERROR: [0] PetscVFPrintfDefault line 197 src/sys/fileio/mprint.c [0]PETSC ERROR: [0] PetscHelpPrintfDefault line 607 src/sys/fileio/mprint.c [0]PETSC ERROR: [0] PetscOptionsEList line 967 src/sys/objects/aoptions.c [0]PETSC ERROR: [0] KSPSetFromOptions line 382 src/ksp/ksp/interface/itcl.c [0]PETSC ERROR: [0] SNESSetFromOptions line 540 src/snes/interface/snes.c [0]PETSC ERROR: --------------------- Error Message ------------------------------------ [0]PETSC ERROR: Signal received! [0]PETSC ERROR: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [0]PETSC ERROR: Petsc Development HG revision: 13f423daabbd83291cd7dca6481f7cffb49b7019 HG Date: Sat Jul 07 21:50:45 2012 -0500 [0]PETSC ERROR: See docs/changes/index.html for recent updates. [0]PETSC ERROR: See docs/faq.html for hints about trouble shooting. [0]PETSC ERROR: See docs/index.html for manual pages. [0]PETSC ERROR: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [0]PETSC ERROR: ./ex19 on a test_cras named mg1.txcorp.com by jhurani Sun Jul 8 18:15:50 2012 [0]PETSC ERROR: Libraries linked from /scr_0/jhurani/builds/crash/petsc-dev/test_crash/lib [0]PETSC ERROR: Configure run at Sun Jul 8 18:12:46 2012 [0]PETSC ERROR: Configure options --with-clanguage=C++ --with-c-support=1 --with-fortran=0 --with-debugging=yes [0]PETSC ERROR: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [0]PETSC ERROR: User provided function() line 0 in unknown directory unknown file -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Chetan