Strange userdata metatable behavior in C API

[dormando <dormando@...>]

Hey,

I've been fighting with a nasty bug in the C API for a soon-to-be-GPL'ed 
project o' mine... for several hours, and I'm wholly stuck. The problem 
is pretty easy to illustrate:

in lua: (myp.listener and myp.new_handshake_pkt are C calls)
listen = myp.listener("127.0.0.1", 5500)
lmt = getmetatable(listen)
print("listener type", getmetatable(listen))
hs_pkt = myp.new_handshake_pkt()
print("Good", getmetatable(hs_pkt), lmt)
print("Bad", getmetatable(listen), getmetatable(hs_pkt))
print("Built a new handshake packet!", type(hs_pkt), 
hs_pkt:protocol_version(),
hs_pkt:server_version())
print("listener data: ", listen:id(), listen:listener())

output:

listener type   table: 0x519320
Good   table: 0x519510 table: 0x519320
Bad    table: 0x519510 table: 0x519510
Built a new handshake packet!   userdata        10      blah
Could not run lua initializer: toast.lua:26: attempt to call method 'id' 
(a nil value)

so, I do:
obj1 = c_func1()
obj2 = c_func2()
... and now obj1 has obj2's metatable :(

Stuff I've ruled out:

- Swapping the order of the object inits just swaps who gets who's metatable
- On my C end GDB is showing that I'm fetching the correct metatables 
and setting them (it appears!) correctly. The correct pointers are being 
used, etc.
- I'm not leaking stack vars
- I'm not overwriting the global metatable (should be illustrated by the 
lmt = getmetatable(listen) up there
- This won't be true for the whole program, but obj1 and obj2 use 
_completely_ different code paths for generating their objects.
- They don't appear to be garbage collected.
- obj1 and obj2 don't contain the same userdata, they don't == each 
other from within lua, and aren't returning the same pointers into C.

The basic method used to create them in C:
    (init p to something)
    lua_pushlightuserdata(L, p);
    luaL_getmetatable(L, type);
    lua_setmetatable(L, -2);
    return 1;

The metatables are "myp.conn" and "myp.handshake" - and are being 
initialized during startup. Nothing edits the metatables by the time my 
lua file is called.

Using lua 5.1.2 under linux, gcc 4.1.2. The point of this is to bind lua 
objects over C structs. I've been very successful with one object at a 
time... My custom metatable __index works fine, my generic C accessors 
work fine, etc. These objects fully work as long as I'm not creating 
another object after the first one.

I'm really itching to get this working, if anyone has any insight as to 
what I might try to debug this, or if there's anything obvious I can check.

Thanks,
-Dormando