Bug#427562: texlive-base-bin: Launches forkbomb on upgrade/install

[Frank Küster <frank@debian.org>]

John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org> wrote:

> Package: texlive-base-bin
> Version: 2007-11
> Severity: critical
> Justification: breaks unrelated software
>
> I recently tried upgrading (I track sid).
>
> Upon upgrading texlive-base-bin, the system ate all swap and eventually
> crashed.
>
> I subsequently attempted to remove texlive packages with dpkg
> --force-depends --purge, and reinstall with apt-get -f install.
>
> However, the same behavior reoccured.

That's great, simply great.  I've encountered that myself once, and
others have reported it, but nobody was ever able to reproduce it.

>   629 pts/4    S+     0:00 pdftex -ini -jobname=jadetex -progname=jadetex &latex

Okay, in case you want to get your system working, simply remove
jadetex.  In case you want to help us debugging (please!), do the
following:

- Does the command "fmtutil-sys --byfmt jadetex" also trigger the
  behavior?

- If not, does "fmtutil-sys --all" trigger it?

One of these should really do it.  Please save the following script and
make it executable

#!/bin/sh

# fmtutil-sys: Thomas Esser, public domain.

# wrapper script for fmtutil with TEXMFVAR and TEXMFCONFIG set to
#   TEXMFSYSVAR / TEXMFSYSCONFIG

test -f /bin/ksh && test -z "$RUNNING_KSH" \
  && { UNAMES=`uname -s`; test "x$UNAMES" = xULTRIX; } 2>/dev/null \
  && { RUNNING_KSH=true; export RUNNING_KSH; exec /bin/ksh $0 ${1+"$@"}; }
unset RUNNING_KSH

test -f /bin/bsh && test -z "$RUNNING_BSH" \
  && { UNAMES=`uname -s`; test "x$UNAMES" = xAIX; } 2>/dev/null \
  && { RUNNING_BSH=true; export RUNNING_BSH; exec /bin/bsh $0 ${1+"$@"}; }
unset RUNNING_BSH

# hack around a bug in zsh:
test -n "${ZSH_VERSION+set}" && alias -g '${1+"$@"}'='"$@"'
export PATH

v=`kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFSYSVAR`
c=`kpsewhich -var-value TEXMFSYSCONFIG`

TEXMFVAR="$v"
TEXMFCONFIG="$c"
export TEXMFVAR TEXMFCONFIG

exec sh -x fmtutil ${1+"$@"}

and run it (with the option you needed above to reproduce the problem),
capturing stdout and stderr in a file.  Unless this is a Heisenbug, the
problem should show up in the log file.

TIA, Frank
-- 
Frank Küster
Single Molecule Spectroscopy, Protein Folding @ Inst. f. Biochemie, Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer (teTeX/TeXLive)