RFR: 8374343: Fix SIGSEGV when lib/modules is unreadable

[David Holmes]

On Wed, 7 Jan 2026 18:50:48 GMT, Boris Ulasevich <bulasevich at openjdk.org> wrote:

>>> This change adds a null check to avoid the dereference and bail out gracefully.
>> 
>> Note however that it need not actually lead to a failure, and in the process could cause a startup delay while AOT retries the archive loading. So a customer with this unexpected configuration may still not be happy about what they observe happen.
>
>> So a customer with this unexpected configuration may still not be happy about what they observe happen.
> 
> I understand your concern, but the VM should not crash (producing a coredump, triggering various monitoring systems, etc.) when it can just shut down the same way as for other initialization errors -- especially if the crash can be prevented by such a small fix. Do you see a better solution?

@bulasevich I'd like to investigate how this fix behaves under different conditions but I'm going to be away for a few days - back next Tuesday.

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PR Comment: https://git.openjdk.org/jdk/pull/28982#issuecomment-3722196480