WP Crashes due to Memory Corruption on :DEFINE Array Re-declaration

Products

• CA Automic Workload Automation - Automation Engine
• Automic Automation

Issue/Introduction

Recurring Work Process (WP) crashes in Automic Automation Engine may occur during task generation (GENX) for jobs utilizing specific nested include structures and dynamic array re-declarations. This issue is caused by a memory corruption defect (DE181314) during pointer arithmetic handling. This article provides the symptoms, cause, and remediation steps to restore system stability.

• Work Process (WP) experiences a native access violation crash (e.g., read 0xFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFF).
• Crashes often occur during GENX of Windows or RA jobs.
• Crashes may result in quarantined GENX messages and require WP recovery.
• The issue is frequently triggered by script objects using the :DEFINE instruction to re-declare an array’s size with a variable instead of a literal.

Cause

A memory corruption issue in the "get-vara-substring" routine (fixed via DE181314) causes incorrect length handling during nested include processing.

Resolution

Upgrade your Automation Engine to version 24.4.5 or 26.0 or higher. This release contains the permanent fix for the identified memory corruption.