It seems I've discovered a bug. I was helpfully pointed to another email in the mailing list complaining about zerocopy buffers (https://www.mail-archive.com/osmocom-sdr@lists.osmocom.org/msg01204.html)

Removing the `zerocopy` code fixed the problem for me. For the entire diff and more information, please see this answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/54661092/3970701

I can confirm that this error exists on my platform and can provide ssh access for testing purposes.



On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 3:11 AM Amin Shah Gilani <amin@gilani.me> wrote:
Hi

I'm experiencing a "bus error" everytime rtl-sdr tries to interact with my SDR. Here's a sample:

rtl_fm -f 1000000
Found 1 device(s):
  0:  Realtek, RTL2838UHIDIR, SN: 00000001

Using device 0: Generic RTL2832U OEM
Found Rafael Micro R820T tuner
Tuner gain set to automatic.
[R82XX] PLL not locked!
Tuned to 1252000 Hz.
Oversampling input by: 42x.
Oversampling output by: 1x.
Buffer size: 8.13ms
Exact sample rate is: 1008000.009613 Hz
Allocating 15 zero-copy buffers
Bus error

I'm running Kali on a Raspberry Pi, and I've used the repository version, and compiled from source — no change. The only thing that makes this error go away in `rtl_test` is to pass it the -S flag (forcing synchronous) flow.

Does anyone have any idea how to fix this?

If you'd like the Karma and would like to help solve this problem publicly for future users, Stack Overflow question continuously being updated is here:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54657089/rtl-sdr-crashes-with-bus-error-when-running-rtl-tcp-or-rtl-test