Panic when shared object file is missing: Dynamic linker not initialised

There are several Trac tickets floating around which mention this panic, including:

• #9868 (closed) (ghc: panic! Dynamic linker not initialised)
• #10355 (closed) (Dynamic linker not initialised)
• #10919 (closed) (ghc: panic! (the 'impossible' happened) ... Dynamic linker not initialised)
• #13137 (closed) (Dynamic linker not initialised.)
• #13531 (closed) (GHC fails with "Dynamic linker not initialised" when -j is on and trying to load nonexistent .so file)

However, none seem particularly simple to reproduce. I have a (marginally) easier way to trigger this panic. You'll need the following:

• A copy of GHC HEAD built with the prof flavor. For reference, I am using GHC HEAD built against 1f4fd37e.
• A single package built with cabal-install. For simplicity, I used random:

$ cabal install random-1.1 -w ~/Software/ghc3/inplace/bin/ghc-stage2 

Once it's installed, you'll need to learn random's package ID, which can be done with ghc-pkg. For instance:

3$ ~/Software/ghc3/inplace/bin/ghc-pkg describe random
name: random
version: 1.1
id: random-1.1-Gnn89iTXDuaz90MEyLmyr
...

• You'll need these three Haskell files:

-- Foo.hs
{-# LANGUAGE TemplateHaskell #-}
module Foo where

import Language.Haskell.TH

foo :: Bool
foo = $(conE 'True)

-- Foo2.hs
{-# LANGUAGE TemplateHaskell #-}
module Foo2 where

import Language.Haskell.TH

foo2 = $(conE 'False)

-- Bar.hs
module Bar where

import Foo
import Foo2

bar :: ()
bar = foo `seq` foo2 `seq` ()

Once you have all of these, you can trigger the bug by invoking GHC like so:

$ ~/Software/ghc3/inplace/bin/ghc-stage2 -fforce-recomp Bar.hs -j2 -package-id random-1.1-Gnn89iTXDuaz90MEyLmyr
[1 of 3] Compiling Foo              ( Foo.hs, Foo.o )

<no location info>: error:
    <command line>: can't load .so/.DLL for: libHSrandom-1.1-Gnn89iTXDuaz90MEyLmyr.so (libHSrandom-1.1-Gnn89iTXDuaz90MEyLmyr.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory)
[2 of 3] Compiling Foo2             ( Foo2.hs, Foo2.o )

<no location info>: error:
    ghc-stage2: panic! (the 'impossible' happened)
  (GHC version 8.3.20170423 for x86_64-unknown-linux):
        Dynamic linker not initialised
CallStack (from -prof):
  Linker.CAF (<entire-module>)

Please report this as a GHC bug:  http://www.haskell.org/ghc/reportabug

In case it's important, this is using 64-bit Linux.

cc'ing angerman, who requested an easier way to reproduce this panic in #13137 (closed)##13607 (closed).

Trac metadata

Trac field	Value
Version	8.1
Type	Bug
TypeOfFailure	OtherFailure
Priority	normal
Resolution	Unresolved
Component	Compiler
Test case
Differential revisions
BlockedBy
Related
Blocking
CC	angerman
Operating system
Architecture