---
id: "bug-1553"
status: "open"
status_updated: "2026-09-24"
status_note: "intermittent (~1 in 3) controller_unit_test SIGSEGV; not isolated, re-seen 5bf123cc"
component: "controller"
severity: "crash"
timestamp: "2026-08-13T07:35:00Z"
last_seen: "2026-09-19T09:00:00Z"
occurrences: 1
files: ["src/controller/testsuite/ (combined binary", "crash site not yet isolated -- occurs after test_drive_async_config.c's liveness_reserved_* tests)"]
tags: ["flaky", "segfault", "controller_unit_test", "order-dependent", "unity"]
related: []
legacy: true
---

# bug-1553: controller_unit_test (combined 1095-test Unity binary) segfaults intermittently (~1 in 3 full runs…

## Description
controller_unit_test (combined 1095-test Unity binary) segfaults intermittently (~1 in 3 full runs observed) somewhere between test_drive_async_config.c and the next testsuite file (test_configcompare.c/test_slowlane.c area) -- no assertion failure, no ASAN report captured before the crash, process just dies (exit 139/SIGSEGV)

## Environment
_Not recorded (migrated from buglog.json)._

## Reproduction
_Not recorded (migrated from buglog.json)._

## Root cause
Not yet investigated. Reproduced 1/3 runs both BEFORE and AFTER an unrelated worker.c change (update_resval PERROR->rc logging fix) confirming this is pre-existing and unrelated to that fix -- likely order-dependent shared-process state leakage across Unity tests (global fixtures, xstring table, or ASAN heap state) rather than a bug in any specific test file. Two of three runs completed cleanly with 0 failures each time.

## Fix
Not fixed -- out of scope for the update_resval/mxj-auto-detect bugfix session that surfaced it. Needs isolation: bisect which specific test pair triggers it (likely by running testsuite files in smaller batches or under gdb with a core dump), then root-cause the actual memory-safety issue.

## Verification
_Not recorded (migrated from buglog.json)._

## References
_Not recorded (migrated from buglog.json)._