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Bug#315762: marked as done (tetex-bin: Fork bomb in postinst/fmtutil?)

Your message dated Wed, 23 Dec 2009 11:02:39 +0100
with message-id <20091223100239.GI7924@gamma.logic.tuwien.ac.at>
and subject line fork bomb is gone
has caused the Debian Bug report #315762,
regarding tetex-bin: Fork bomb in postinst/fmtutil?
to be marked as done.

This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.

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-- 
315762: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=315762
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact owner@bugs.debian.org with problems
--- Begin Message --- 
Package: tetex-bin
Version: 3.0-3.2
Severity: important
Tags: experimental

Yesterday I removed tetex-bin forcibly (dpkg --force-depends) and
installed it again (aptitude update && aptitude upgrade).  The removed
version was something a little newer than 3.0-3, which I had
unfortunately called 3.0-4, and the installed version was 3.0-3.2.

Upon reinstalling, the postinst script got into an endless loop of
calling fmtutil; the error messages were displayed on the screen, but I
didn't record them.  I think it was about some latex format, maybe
jadetex, but that might be just a misconception because I had so many
jadetex problems.

I tried to stop it, but after Ctrl-c it started over again, and `ps axf'
showed an unbranched tree starting from the postinst (which didn't have
a parent!).  I think it was a repeated sequence of two commands, one of
them fmtutil, but I don't even recall the other -- I didn't have time
for such a mess, just wanted to use LaTeX again.

kill -9 on the postinst didn't help, also not on the most recent
incarnation of fmtutil, but that might well have been the second most
recent at the time I tried to kill it.

Working on the machine was kind of hard, because it consumed all memory
and swap (only little CPU).  Exiting the xsession killed the terminal to
which fmtutil was spitting its output and where I had given the command,
but it was still running and calling itself again.  A reboot helped :-).


After the reboot, I removed jadetex from fmtutil.cnf, and I found that
the symlink /etc/texmf/generic/language.dat (to /etc/texmf/language.dat)
was missing, and it was using lambda's language.dat.  This caused some
errors when I ran dpkg --configure -a, but it didn't replicate itself,
and was fixed by reinstalling tetex-base.  After that, I also tried
jadetex again, and it worked.


I think I/we should look at this again, maybe try to reproduce it.

Regards, Frank

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 3.1
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Kernel: Linux 2.6.8-2-386
Locale: LANG=de_DE@euro, LC_CTYPE=de_DE@euro (charmap=ISO-8859-15)

Versions of packages tetex-bin depends on:
ii  debconf [debconf-2.0]    1.4.30.13       Debian configuration management sy
ii  debianutils              2.8.4           Miscellaneous utilities specific t
ii  dpkg                     1.10.28         Package maintenance system for Deb
ii  ed                       0.2-20          The classic unix line editor
ii  libc6                    2.3.2.ds1-22    GNU C Library: Shared libraries an
ii  libgcc1                  1:3.4.3-13      GCC support library
ii  libice6                  4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 Inter-Client Exchange library
ii  libkpathsea4             3.0-4           path search library for teTeX (run
ii  libpaper1                1.1.14-3        Library for handling paper charact
ii  libpng12-0               1.2.8rel-1      PNG library - runtime
ii  libsm6                   4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Window System Session Management
ii  libstdc++5               1:3.3.5-13      The GNU Standard C++ Library v3
ii  libt1-5                  5.0.2-3         Type 1 font rasterizer library - r
ii  libx11-6                 4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Window System protocol client li
ii  libxaw7                  4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Athena widget set library
ii  libxext6                 4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Window System miscellaneous exte
ii  libxmu6                  4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Window System miscellaneous util
ii  libxpm4                  4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X pixmap library
ii  libxt6                   4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Toolkit Intrinsics
ii  mime-support             3.28-1          MIME files 'mime.types' & 'mailcap
ii  perl                     5.8.4-8         Larry Wall's Practical Extraction 
ii  sed                      4.1.2-8         The GNU sed stream editor
ii  tetex-base               3.0-3.3         Basic library files of teTeX
ii  ucf                      1.17            Update Configuration File: preserv
ii  xlibs                    4.3.0.dfsg.1-14 X Keyboard Extension (XKB) configu
ii  zlib1g                   1:1.2.2-4       compression library - runtime

-- debconf information:
  tetex-bin/updmap-failed:
  tetex-bin/hyphen: french[=patois], ngerman[=naustrian-neue_Rechtschreibung]
  tetex-bin/oldcfg: true
* tetex-bin/upd_map: true
  tetex-bin/cnf_name:
* tetex-bin/fmtutil: true
* tetex-bin/use_debconf: false
  tetex-bin/fmtutil-failed:
* tetex-bin/groupname: users
* tetex-bin/userperm: false
* tetex-bin/groupperm: true
* tetex-bin/lsr-perms: true

-- 
Frank Küster
Inst. f. Biochemie der Univ. Zürich
Debian Developer

--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message --- 
Version: 2009-4

I am closing the "fork bomb" bug now, as we have seen fmtutil is in
fact (since 2008) overeager not to go into an infinite loop.

Best wishes

Norbert
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Norbert Preining            preining@{jaist.ac.jp, logic.at, debian.org}
JAIST, Japan            TU Wien, Austria           Debian TeX Task Force
DSA: 0x09C5B094   fp: 14DF 2E6C 0307 BE6D AD76  A9C0 D2BF 4AA3 09C5 B094
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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--- End Message ---
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