Bug#262162: getent aliases eternal loop or memory leak
Package: libc6
Version: 2.2.5-11.5
'getent aliases' shows all the aliases. Then, instead of exiting, it
starts eating memory. Nothing is output to screen. All memory (256M) is
eaten up in a few seconds, then all swap is taken out as fast as the
disk can write.
It works fine with a default /etc/aliases file (with only the system
users in it), but with our /etc/aliases the above happens. The
/etc/aliases file itself seems to "work"; newaliases does not complain,
and we use it in a running postfix system, no problems afaik.
Other getent commands (passwd, group) work fine. Our /etc/passwd is
somewhat big, 731 lines in 57656 bytes.
I have attached our /etc/aliases. I am not sure what other configuration
is relevant to this. /etc/nsswitch does not have an entry for the
aliases database (and has not been changed from the defaults).
This is woody with libc6-2.2.5-11.5. On a sid with libc6-2.3.2ds1-12 the
problem does not exist.
Kernel is custom compiled from kernel-source-2.4.18. Tested on different
machines with same results (PII-350/256M, PIII-600/256M, PIII-733/256M;
all running same libc6 packages, but slightly different kernels).
Simon
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